Love Languages

I recently had reason to take for myself the "5 Love Languages" online quiz: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/

This quiz is based on the theory, developed in the books by Gary Chapman, that there are five main ways that people express love, and thereby recognize love being expressed to them.

Mine came out in this order:

8 Receiving Gifts
8 Words of Affirmation
6 Physical Touch
6 Quality Time
2 Acts of Service

This means two things - that when I express love, I will probably do it by giving you presents or saying nice things about you, and that if you want to express love to me, I will be looking for these same behaviors in turn.

(The low ranking of "Acts of Service" is due to some noise in the system, which I blame on being an oldest child, and is something I already knew about myself - if people offer to help me, I view it as criticism and the expression, not of love, but of the opinion that I am incapable of doing the thing myself.  This causes lots of unpleasant interactions both at work and in interpersonal relationships, but it's something I'm working on separately.)

Some other folks who are close to me also took this quiz, and as ever it's interesting because it acknowledges that not everyone is the same, and even in something that's thought of as so basic and elemental as Love, communication takes place through a framework of assumptions that are different for each individual, and it's important to understand the other's perspective as much as you can.

This got me thinking about how someone might not have learned the same expected expressions as I have.  Mine, to me, seem so elemental, but did I learn them, and if so, from where?

I only had to think about this question for about thirty seconds to realize that my framework was built by a lifetime of saturation in pop love songs, Romantic literature, and Romantic Comedy films.  And if someone hadn't been exposed to any of those things, or had been exposed much less, they might not have learned the same script for how a Lover should act and speak.

The goopy, transcendent, all-consuming, moony, aching longing type of love is not something elemental and essentially true.  It's a cultural construct, from a very specific culture, namely Romantic-period Europe.  Everyone I've talked to about this immediately points out that this tradition arose from a culture of royalty with plenty of means and too much time on their hands.  If you don't have to work, then it's easy to let your whole being be consumed with longing for an idealized Other, and to spend your time in writing paeans to them that say that they are your whole life and eternal soul, they embody all the beauty in the world and beyond, that your life without their regard is without meaning and you would rather die than be separate from them.

Part of me wants to hear these things from someone, but realistically, in today's modern world, if someone where to carry on this way, I would be very concerned.  Words like this, in today's modern society, come usually from someone who has made an ideal person up in their head, and is writing letters and poems to them.  Real, actual, person-to-person relationships in today's real world are not like this.

Still, though.  Cinderella dies hard.