The Five Love Languages – Wikipedia
— Read on en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages

Many years ago, I read this book, and it changed the way I related to people. I began to see how others received love, and I determined in my heart to love them in the way they could understand, not the way I like to be loved.

I saw that my husband and son were both “Quality Time and Physical Touch” people. Our daughter a “Gift Giver and Acts of Service” girl. My mom, a strong “Words of Affirmation”, while my dad was a strong “Acts of Service” guy. Me, I am “Acts of Service and Physical Touch”, although receiving a gift every now and then would be nice too…

Acts of service came pretty easy to me, as well as physical touch and gift giving. The words of affirmation was a challenge for me. In the last few years of my mother’s life (which I didn’t know would be her last at the time), I had to really focus on affirming her. “Mom, you sure do put a lot of love into making a good soup.” “You look really nice in that outfit today.” It was a challenge, but I tried to say something affirming each day (they lived with us for a few years).

That was fifteen years ago. My father lives with us now, and we have the same love language, which makes for an easy relationship with him. With my honey, the exhaustion of a high stress job reduces some of our marital physical touch, but I always try to give him a bear back scratch in the morning, and a big hug when we returns home at night, and then, I put away the phone, stop working and sit and look him in the eye when he wants to share his day with me. When I see my son, he gets a hug and eye to eye conversation. Our daughter gets many care packages from home filled with things she can’t get in Japan and lots of love. I am still trying to figure out our daughter in law and grandkids.

Monday they have a school holiday. I found a website called 5lovelanguages.com that has an online quiz to figure out your love language. I may have the kids do that with me and then talk about the concept that because people are different from one another, they give and receive love differently.

When I sit and watch a basketball or football game with my honey, and pay attention and get into it, that says a big I love you to him. When he was growing up, his family watched sports together. Super hard for me, since I see watching tv as a huge waste of time. So, I picked his two favorite teams, the Zags (Gonzaga Bulldogs) basketball and the Minnesota Vikings football to watch with him. I make a big deal out of game time with popcorn, getting cozy on the couch. I get to know the players so I can talk about the game, and I even know the game schedule before he tells me. I learned this because he was lamenting one day that none of the grandkids would just sit with him and watch a game. I asked a few questions and learned this about him.

I highly recommend this and the related books (one about kids love languages, and I think a third). Buy it, check it out of the library. If you want to be a good lover, read this book and then challenge yourself to step outside your box and love others differently. You will become a more balanced person that way. Share what you’ve learned with your loved ones so they can learn too. You can become an excellent lover!