Your Love Language is Actually Your Deepest Conditioning
What?! Why?!
By this time in 2021 (this article was originally published on Medium on 12/16/21), if you haven’t read The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman (aff link), what are you even doing with your life? It’s probably one of the most talked about books when it comes to relationships. It’s been incredibly powerful for many people because it helped them identify their needs and communicate them to their partner.
I picked up this book several years ago (maybe 2016 or 2017) because everyone was talking about it and I obviously needed to see what all the hype was about. And I have to say, I was a little disappointed. It didn’t feel like any newinformation but I could see how people found power in the explanations. I also found that my love langauge was different with different partners. So how much of this was based on myself and how much was based on what I thought others could provide for me?(This may be a whole other article) Anyway, the author takes you through a quiz that allows you to identify the top ways that you perceive love and feel loved. That seems useful. I mean, we don’t all appreciate or perceive love in the same way so this seemed important.
Here’s what we’ve got…
Physical touch — touch me
Words of affirmation — tell me how much you adore me
Gifts — buy me things
Acts of service — do things for me
Quality time — give me your undivided attention
I got to thinking about my own love language, which tends to be gifts.(You can Venmo me money to buy gifts if you want … I am dannay on Venmo 😉). Why was it that I felt so loved whenever I received unexpected gifts? I could easily say that it’s because gifts are AWESOME but it was deeper than that.
I was born in Israel (immigrated to America at the age of 8). My father was from Greek (Sephardic) decent and my mother was Ashkanazi (German father and Polish mother). To say that she was a wee bit cold, is an understatement. In fact, her entire family was a bit avoidant, chilly, and uninviting. Feeling warm, coddled, and loved was something that only happened on rare occasions. And those occasions just happened to be trips to the mall. My mother showed her love in the best and only way that she could… through buying gifts.
My best friend reminded me of this story recently. When we were in the seventh grade, one of our friends hung himself. We were devastated as this was our first real experience with death. We went to the funeral, and I was shocked that we got to actually see the dead boy in his open casket. This is NOT something we do in Israel. Upset and moody, my mother came to pick us up. She didn’t know what to say or how to comfort us so what did she do? You guessed it, she took us shopping and bought us as many things as it took to feel better, from Abercrombie & Fitch.
Fast forward 25 years, and it seems pretty clear to me why gifts are my primarily love language. It’s how I was raised. It’s how I knew I was adored and loved. There is no blame or shame in any of this, you have to realize. It’s simply an understanding of how I came to be who I am and why my expectations of love are as such. My point is that gifts is a great love language. However, love can be shared in so many different ways and if we narrow our vision to simply focus on how we were conditioned to experience love, we are limiting our capacity to truly feel and express love.
Here are some ways to explore the 5 love languages from the lens of our conditionings:
Physical touch — abuse (sexual or otherwise) may imprint the belief that we are not worthy without someone valuing our bodies. This is especially true for sexual abuse victims. Did your inner child learn that hitting was love? That sexual touching was the same as adoration? (Please seek professional help if you have endured any sort of trauma). The flipside of the coin is a lack-thereof. There wasn’t much warm embracing in my family and now it is something that I crave and expect from my partners as a way of feeling loved. And when I don’t receive it (because often it is the deep need for something that means we have a subconscious shadow around not deserving it), I automatically assume I am not loved or appreciated, completely ignoring anything else that may be happening at the time. This was a trauma response. The threat of feeling unloved threw me into fight/flight effecting my thoughts and percetions.
Words of affirmation — Needing external validation is normal. But did we grow up with too much of it that now we expect it? Or did we grow up without it at all and feel unworthy of any of it, continually searching for someone else to tell us how great we are in the hopes that we’ll actually believe it? Validation from others is a slippery slope into people pleasing and fawning (another nervous system response to perceived danger).
Gifts — We covered this one above. But here is another perspective. Am I worthy of nice things? Do I need to wait for others to decide that I am OF value and valuable? Do I rely on THINGS to prove my worth?
Acts of service — Did you have to be “the fixer” growing up? Were all of the household responsibilities on your shoulders? Are you just dying for someone to step in and take something, ANYTHING, off your plate? Or is that just wishful thinking because you’re too much of a control freak to let anyone help? Perhaps the opposite? Are you scared to have any responsibility because your caregivers never trusted you to do anything by yourself? Scared to let people down and make mistakes so you never start or try? Are you co-dependent or way too independent?
Quality time — I really feel like this one is a nervous system regulation issue as well. We need intimate connections to regulate our nervous systems. It’s called co-regulation and it’s incredibly powerful. But we often don’t receive this as children. So we develop anxious attachment styles (I will do a whole other article on attachment styles) to try to control rejection and often hold on to a romanticized version of our partner instead of surrendering to what is actually here. Or we develop an avoidant attachment style for fear of getting hurt and never hold on to anything long enough to build an intimate and safe connection. Both options suck for the nervous system. Both options leave you dysregulated and in survival mode.
I want to stress that needing or desiring any of these things to feel loved is not inherently wrong. It’s simply who you are (or should I say, who you have become). However, I have seen the way people use these love languages and it isn’t always healthy. I’ve seen people DEMAND gifts or words of affirmation from their partner and then be incredibly disappointed and feel unworthy when they don’t receive it, falling into a depression. The truth is that not everyone can give you what you want when you want it. And we don’t always know why. It could be their conditionings or it could be that they’re not really that into you. Either way, when we expand our perception of love and begin to feel our own value and worthiness from the inside out, we are more likely to experience it from the outside in.
As cliche as it sounds, it starts with feeling it within you first. And always, always, staying curious and aware about the things you do and why. Because that’s where the GIFTS are.
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