When Words Are All I Need

Someone gave me a book called The Five Love Languages written by Gary Chapman to read recently. I just finished it. In it, it he talks about how there are generally five different sort of 'love languages' that we all best read and respond to. Generally one or two of these languages speak loudest to each and everyone of us, which we use to convey our love as well as interpret the love we receive. These five are:

#1 Words of affirmation
#2 Quality time
#3 Acts of service
#4 Giving of Gifts
#5 Physical touch

Relationship problems usually crop because because when it comes to love, we often speak different languages. Some people need words of affirmation to feel love while others cherish quality time more. Some consider gifts as superfluous while to others think its a very special token. A person may be showing all the love he has for another person by constantly giving them words of affirmation, but for a person who looks at acts of services as a true show of love would consider words to be cheap. Another person may be doing all sorts of acts of service for the person he / she loves as his way of conveying his care, but is totally lost on a person waiting looking instead for quality time & bonding. As a result, we all get frustrated. We all feel unloved. And as he correctly points out, we are all emotional beings, and without exception, we all have a deep need to feel loved. It's not about knowing you're loved. It's about actually feeling loved. In fact, so great is this need that it is often the underlying reason why people cheat on their spouses, walk away from their marriage or seek love and affection elsewhere.

As I read through the book, I thought a lot about a lot of my relationships, about the people who mattered to me. What were their languages of love? It made me looks at all of my experiences from a new angle. I realized that perhaps there were many times I was being showed love in a particular way but did not realize it. By the same token, I might have been hurting their feelings being being totally unaware of what I was saying / not saying in another language.

I realized my brother wanting to play computer games with me was about quality time. My mother constantly clinging on to my hand was physical touch. My fiancee doing practically everything for me was acts of service. My closest and most sisterly friend constantly giving me books, CDs etc was her giving of gifts. I now know that though they were all different acts, they still boiled down to one common gesture; a gesture of love. By all accounts, I'm supposed to feel pretty loved right now... and yet I don't. I know I'm loved by these people. But I don't feel loved.

Because.... I think my main language of love is words of affirmation. A close second would be quality time, but I realized I us words more than anything else to convey my feelings. I'm always telling people how good, witty, funny, observant, smart, pretty, thoughtful, intelligent, stunning, awesome, amazing and sensitive they are. By verbally affirming a person, I'm trying to show that I care and that in my eyes, there is a lot about them I admire and love. And more often than not, I secretly crave to hear such affirming words from people too. Just simple words, truthfully & sincerely spoken. They galvanize me, they spur me on, they make whatever pain or sacrifice I've had to make all seem worth it. But it's so rare, so far in between that I hear genuine words of affirmation. Maybe people are afraid of coming across as patronizing. Or maybe our Asian culture of automatically rejecting praise has also thought us not to give them out too freely either.

But like a double edge sword, words work for me as well as against me. Words mean a lot to me, and I try to be careful about what I say to people, especially in moments of anger. My fiancee correctly pointed out that for every unkind word that I have spoken, there are dozen more that I filtered out. I would not want to say hurtful things because if I were on the receiving end, I know it'd hurt. And for me, it hurts....... A LOT when someone says something spiteful to me, be it out of anger, frustration or anything. The words stay with me, haunt me, and remain like daggers stuck to my heart for a long long time.


It's hard to not feel like you're on an emotional roller coaster sometimes. People don't always mean what they say. Sometimes they're just angry and frustrated and you end up being the punching bag. But the words hurt no less. Other times, they mean every word they say, but only at the moment. When circumstances change, they replace them with other words, other meanings. You're left there wondering what to make of those previous words; passionately uttered but quickly chucked aside.

A kind word here and there, short emails, random comments on my blog & Facebook post; most of them who say nice things to me don't know it, but it is these bits & pieces of soul food that feed my need to feel loved.  I don't feel like the most loved person in the world....but I survive.