My Love Language

If you've ever attended church for any amount of time, you've probably heard talk about the five love languages. Even if you don't attend church, you may have still heard about the love languages as they seem to be everywhere. In a nutshell, every person has a primary love language- one s/he appreciates and respond to the most. It's how one prefers to receive affection from others. The love language you identify with is NOT how you show love for others, but how others show love for you.   

The five love languages are: 

1) Words of Affirmation

2) Gifts

3) Acts of Service

4) Quality Time

5) Physical Touch

I have attended church as long as I can remember and went to a private, Christian college, but in all my time in these settings, I never actually took time to figure out my love language. It wasn't until about a month and a half ago when I was talking to J that I started thinking about my love language. He had brought the subject up and was telling me about his primary love language and I had no clue what mine was. Neither one of us had actually read the book by Gary Champan so I decided to pick a copy up (shocker, I bought another book) and explore the different languages. It didn't take much for me to figure out which love language is my language. 

Anyone want to take a guess?!? No. Okay. It's quality time. 

Quality time- spending time with others. As an introvert, I prefer my quality time one-on-one. On occasion, I enjoy the group thing, but I love one-on-one time because it allows me to invest in one person at a time. I feel the most connected to a person through quality time. I can listen to the person's experiences, thoughts, beliefs, etc. I enjoy getting to know someone on a personal level, a level that allows him/her to open up to me in a way they don't to other people. Spending quality time with me will also make me naturally open up because I sense the person cares about me and wants to share in my experiences and beliefs. 

Quality time is essential to any relationship I have, whether that's with friends, family, or a significant other. When I discovered my love language is quality time, I had a sort of "AHA" moment about past relationships and things I currently do.    

I recall several times, I have gotten extremely frustrated with people, mostly friends, who haven't made it a priority to spend time with me. Maybe priority isn't the right word. More like I felt they didn't care one way or the other about spending time with me. In high school and college, I was close to several friends who ended up getting into relationships. We all know this story. When you start a new relationship, it's typical for the significant other to become the most important person in your world and everyone else takes the back-burner. (I am extremely thankful this has not been the case in my relationship with J.) When I was the one being put on the back-burner, this didn't bode well for the friendship. I was angry. I was hurt. I felt replaced. Sadly, most of these friendships don't exist anymore because of the circumstances that arose with significant others and the lack of quality time I had with those friends.  

Just recently, I was attempting to make plans to visit out-of-town friends. I was not getting the quick, enthusiastic replies I desired so I decided not to go. One of my friends was persistent in wanting me to come and was attempting to convince me. Unfortunately for her, I ended up venting my frustrations about one of my last visits and my disappointment in the lack of time I had spent with my friends. I had spent almost an entire Saturday by myself on that trip. Because I hadn't gotten the response I wanted with this recent attempt, I feared I wasn't going to get quality time with my friends. I didn't want a repeat of that Saturday. I ultimately decided I still wasn't going, but agreed to attend her birthday party since she was adamant about wanting to see me. Thank you for that, friend. :) 

Now, for anyone who knows me, you know that most of my close friends don't live in the same town as me. I have friends from camp and college in towns all over Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, and possibly some other states. It's a bit difficult to spend quality time with them on a regular basis. So, how do I keep up these friendships and feel like I still get quality time? Social media- Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Skype, texting. Pretty much anything but Twitter (I still don't understand the point of Twitter). I'm aware that I post a ridiculous amount of things on Facebook daily. I wish I could say I'm sorry for that, but it's my "quality time" with my friends so I'm not sorry in the slightest. When I've spent time with people I'm thankful for, you'll find I often post a status about it. I appreciate my time with those people and want them to know. I try not to take my time with people for granted, especially those I don't get to see often. 

Figuring out my love language opened my eyes to so many experiences I have had in the past that didn't always make sense to me. I never understood why I got so irritated with people who didn't seem to care about spending time with me. I didn't realize why I would wait hours (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration) in a restaurant for someone to show up. I didn't know why I was one of the only ones of my friends to post on Facebook about time I had spent with my friends. I didn't understand why going more than a few days without seeing someone I care about drove me bonkers. It all just makes a little more sense to me. Honestly, if I had stopped to think about it, I probably would have known why these things were so important to me, but I hadn't taken the time. Now that I know how much I value quality time, maybe I'll be able to control my emotions better because I realize that quality time isn't everyone's love language. While it is extremely important to me, it may not be for them.