What Your Love Language Says About You

It was a bit disconcerting at first. To take this quiz that promised to uncover my love language only to find out that I’m materialistic.

That was my initial reaction to seeing the results: receiving gifts.

Did this mean I was more concerned about getting material things than holding my husband’s hand or spending quality time together? According to a very well-designed quiz based on a very well researched concept, yes.

After the horror and shame faded a bit, I took a moment and got curious about this new revelation. What did that mean? Why could this be true for me right now?

I like getting gifts, sure, but this had to go deeper than that.

The 5 Love Languages, as defined by Dr. Gary Chapman and articulated fully in his book of the same title, include receiving gifts, acts of service, quality time, words of affirmation, and physical touch.

So, why wasn’t I primarily any of the other four?

Physical touch.

This was an easy one for me to see. I spent a couple of decades in relationships with people who placed high value on the physical side of our couplehood. You can blame hormones, living in Vegas, or working in a persuasive-dependent industry where appearance was half your paycheck. Either way, my physical body was more important than my mind or my feelings. They treated me like that, and then I willingly internalized the message as truth.

Words of affirmation.

This was also an easy one for the same reasons. I was in numerous relationships with people who lied to me, fed me lines, and turned on a dime. Part of my childhood laid a foundation as well where I learned not to trust anything I couldn’t hold in my hands. Friendship, love, a happy moment. So many things fell apart around me, and I was taking notes. The only person I could trust was my dad back then. If not for him, I would surely be a lot more messed up right now.

Quality time.

I think this could also stem from my childhood where some happy moments were so fleeting or often interrupted by an angry outburst that quality time became scary time. I have learned to appreciate the happy moments and the quality time, but I don’t necessarily equate them with love. I don’t make them mean anything more than what they are.

Acts of service.

This is, actually, my secondary love language, meaning it’s relatively high up there for how I receive love. Maybe it’s the volunteering I have done or how I’ve been of service to others in a lot of my jobs. Health coach, behavior therapist, long-term care nurse assistant, peer mentor for at-risk youth, hospice patient visitor. Some of that included providing quality time but making the effort to show up was how I measured my value in those roles. It was easy to sit there and listen to stories. It was not easy to drop them off at their dilapidated home knowing they might have to battle roaches for the bathroom. And it was not easy to sit there and hold their hand while they cried. It was impossible to sit there and hold their hand when they died.

Receiving gifts.

Maybe this is my love language because it’s a tangible thing that I can trust exists and time and resources were spent to give it to me. Maybe it’s because when I received gifts as a child the card attached always said I love you. Or maybe it’s simply that the quiz responses which made the most sense to me added up to this. Either way, what I do with this information is what matters.

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The point of this type of quiz is to help you understand yourself and to understand your partner and then to apply the results accordingly. It’s not, as I’ve found, meant to be used as a judgement or criticism, even by yourself. We all perceive life differently. Nobody is wholly right or wholly wrong. Instead, we’re all doing our best to understand the journey.