Wanted: a different love language

Words of Affirmation is one of my primary love languages.

Do you know what that means? It means that I feel most loved when you verbally affirm me. It means that encouragement goes a long way and it means that words mean way more to me than the average person. You can quite literally build me or break me with your words or even your lack of words.

Do you know how much that sucks?

It means that I take it quite personally when I’m not affirmed, it means that your words (good or bad) will have more of an effect on me and it means that I quite literally feel unloved at times when I don’t hear the words of affirmation that I need to hear.

It means that I am VERY self-critical. It means that I over-think and over- analyse things to the point of driving myself nuts – because obviously I will ponder your words for a long time. It means that I continue to annoy myself (and others) if I don’t get affirmation in the way that I need it.

Honestly? I wish I could be like my DH. He absolutely  could not care less if people affirm him or not. He affirms himself. He sets his own standard and measures his own performance. He doesn’t need anyone else to do this for him.  HE knows his worth and doesn’t need others to remind him of this.

I am deeply envious at how unaffected he is by the lack of affirmation in some areas of his life. I regularly affirm and encourage him (it comes very naturally for  me to do this with him and other people) but even if for some reason I don’t do this then it really is fine and he remains unaffected.

Mostly I compensate for the lack of affirmation in my life and I find that the best way to do this is to affirm others some more. But other times like today I really feel the lack of affirmation and it sucks. Granted, it could be that I’m PMS’ing and feel somewhat oversensitive.

I wonder if I can learn to have Gifts or something else as my primary love language because really, this just seems so much less complicated. Do you think that this is possible? Could I learn to have another love language if the one that I have has the potential to annoy me and others?

What is your Love Language?

Is your love tank full at this moment?

Do you sometimes wish you could rather have a different one? I know that this probably makes me odd. Rather don’t tell me that today. Please.

Ps…if you don’t know your Love Language you can take the test here:

My love tank….she is overflowing today.

On Friday evening I got roped into something rather unexpectedly which meant that, as soon as I arrived home I had to leave again.

My friend came to fetch me and we drove to where we needed to be in order to do our thing.

Afterwards we were driving home (this was at about 22:00pm or so) and he started talking to me about this and that going on in his life, specifically at home.

He started telling me about how his wife was dealing with a particular matter that they were struggling with and what struck me the most, was the way he spoke about her.

That conversation was probably the highlight of my evening and it is something that I will never, ever forget. It was so very moving.  He spoke about how much he admired her and what he most loved about her and he generally just sang her praises. He told me about how their love grew over the years into something deeper and more meaningful and tender and that despite all the difficulties that they faced in their married life, he would absolutely do it all over again ONLY WITH HER.

I have never, ever heard a man speak so beautifully about his wife. Except for my Dad about my Mom, but that doesn’t count because my Daddy is the most perfect man alive.

I happen to know his wife (she loves me to bits btw…) and I was so tempted to phone her to offer her my support and to tell her that her husband spoke the loveliest things about her. I ended up not doing it because I got so distracted on Saturday by manflu and whining toddlers and play dates, but I thought about this for most of the weekend.

Yesterday morning I asked my DH if he ever spoke to people about me. He said yes. I asked him when he last spoke about me. He told me that he spoke about me quite recently to a woman in the office who had just gotten married.

I asked him what the conversation was about and what exactly he said about me. HE told me that he was feeling too sick to talk about it and could we not talk about this when he had his voice back. Shame. He was VERY sick with that nasty manflu.

Anyway. Yesterday after I came from Church with the kids (I purposefully took my time and went to the mall afterwards AND then to my Mother – all in the name of building up my sympathy levels) he presented me with a letter that he wrote me in his own beautiful handwriting.

In the letter he wrote me details of the conversation that he’d had with this woman colleague as well as every single thing that he said to her about me.

I just melted. Don’t you think that it is just so sweet that he wrote me a letter because he lost his voice? Awwwww….so, so beautiful. Manflu or not, he managed to score major brownie points with me.

And it made me realise that, even though I do speak a lot of positive things about him (on this blog and irl) I don’t do it nearly enough. So I will definitely be making a lot more effort to be aware of the kinds of things I say about him.

Do you speak a lot about your partner/spouse? Not just  “he leaves his shoes in the lounge” type of stuff. I’m talking seriously positive, ego-boosting stuff. Do you? Do you know if he speaks about you and what kind of things he is saying to people about you?