Love languages

The other night I was at a dinner party with friends and friends of my friends. It was a great evening with tasty food, lovely company, and nice conversations.

At one point in the evening one of the friends of a friend started to tell about their recent break-up.
They went on saying that how they thought it was going well, how they gave all they could and when it turned out to be not enough and ended in a break-up how upset and confused, they felt. And keep feeling still.
As I just met that person for the first time on that evening, I had hardly any knowledge about them, let alone the relationship they were grieving.
So while listening to them and to the reactions of their friends (which I must say here, was the usual, meant to be supportive ‘you were right-they were wrong, they didn’t deserve you, better will come along, you are better off without them’ and others along this line) my mind wandered off somewhat, and I started to contemplate on what could have been the cause of that seemingly unexpected break-up.

One thing that crossed my mind, were the love languages and so I decided to write about those.
Dr. Gary Chapman wrote a book, The 5 Love Languages, in which he outlines 5 ways how people want to be loved.
He calls them the love languages, which are:
– word of affirmation: feels loved when hear or read words of affection, kind words, encouragement, love notes, cute, sweet messages, compliments.
– quality time: being loved to them means their partner is present, giving them focused undivided attention, really are listened to. Wants quality over quantity.
– physical touch: understands being loved through physical affection. Sex of course and holding hands on a walk or in the cinema, a touch on their body when passing them in the house, a massage, cuddling, … they want to be close to their partner physically.
– act of service: feel loved by their partner doing nice things for them. Like helping to prepare a meal, running some errands, giving a hand in finishing a project, whatever that may be, it has to come without being asked for.
– receiving gifts: for those with this love language, it is not about materialism, as it can be as little as their favourite chocolate bar. They feel loved as they understand the time and effort being put into picking a gift for them specifically, showing that their partner knows them, cares for them. Also, they need gifts frequently not only on the ‘major holidays’.

Okay, so why the love languages came into my mind on that evening?
Because I often see that partners do not understand the needs of their significant other.
They simply do not talk about what love means to them, how they would like it to be expressed towards them.
Many times, relationships remind me of a gigantic puzzle game, where both parties are holding certain pieces and they are trying to work out how their own puzzle pieces can be put together with their partner’s. Although they never even clarified whether they hold pieces for the same game!

Rather than clearing the table by having conversations where both would explain their own ‘instruction manual’.
Of course, that would suppose that they know themselves!

You see, when my love language is physical touch and I will keep receiving smaller bigger gifts all the time, although I will be grateful for those gifts, I won’t be perfectly happy.
When we had some talks where I expressed that, and my partner would say he understood but there would be no changes in his actions, I probably would call it quits after some time.

When one’s primary love language is not met, one will get frustrated and likely will not see other, well working things in the relationship to be enough to stay for and keep on going.

Or if s/he stays, it’s quite sure that some dissatisfaction, frustration will continuously be lingering over.

Also, because in a relationship it is pretty rare that both/all partners have the same love language, and we often make the ‘mistake’ of that we give what we want to receive, unnecessary challenges are for sure to be faced.

Certainly, there are ways to save the day, I mean the relationship, of course.

Oh gosh! Am I boring or what?
Solution, again, is knowing oneself and an ongoing, open, honest communication between partners.

So, I don’t know, but maybe the reason of that unexpected break-up was, that the partner’s primary love language wasn’t satisfied and although this friend was putting in all they had, it was not what it was needed.