Not gonna lie guys I think I’m onto something groundbreaking and I can’t find anything on Google to suggest it’s already been covered so this may be my big break…
lol anyway… I’m guessing the majority of you reading this will know all about love languages, or at least get the gist of it. Some years ago I wrote all about the 5 languages and you can find out what your top ones are here – make sure you take a read if you haven’t already! It’s also a good idea to test yourself every few years as our needs and desires in love change as we grow as people…
One of the biggest barriers to love in our twenties and thirties (heck, even older) is communication, or lack thereof. I’ve noticed so many people are quick to say ‘well I’M good at communicating, but no one else is…’ and it got me thinking 1) are we in denial about our ability to communicate or 2) is it deeper than ones ability?
I mean, the whole love language thing makes sense to so many people. It’s used daily to define how we wish to be loved and delves into the different ways affection can be shown to our significant others. So what’s different about communication? If we all love differently then surely there’s grounds to say we all communicate differently? How one person might prefer to communicate could be wholly different to how somebody else prefers to communicate, and without a solid understanding of this it’s easy to assume our partners aren’t meeting us on the level our needs need to be met at.
Me for example, I am a talker. I have to say how I feel and although I’m good at falling back and holding my tongue If I have to, it’s really not the way I prefer to operate. I’ve been known to ‘say too much’ because I reel things off the top of my head and the other person, who clearly communicates differently to me, is barely responding. It looks one sided when really the other person is just struggling to match the way I prefer to communicate. It’s only when you sit down with a person and get that moment of clarity that you understand that they’re not avoiding you, or unwilling to respond, but more so navigating their feelings in different ways.
This is obviously something I need to research in more depth but I’m really interested to see how big an impact our methods of communication affect our relationships. And I’m not talking about whether someone simply can or cannot communicate because boy there’s years of research on what life events, traumas and other factors affect our ability to talk, but I mean looking at the different branches of communication as a whole and seeing it from the same perspective we do with love languages. We all know in ourselves what we like and what we don’t like – some people like calling, some prefer texting. Some people give silent treatment when they need space, some cannot stand it (ME, I CANNOT STAND IT).
Do you ever discuss how you like to be communicated with? Or just struggle and bash heads with your partner or dating potentials? I think it’s fair to say we’ve got into this habit of assuming that if someone can’t match our needs right away then they need to be cut off or binned, and it’s something that’s starting to bother me. We’re so quick to protect ourselves and say we deserve the best of the best and whoever can’t communicate with us effectively needs to go but bro maybe the problem is the way that we’re communicating with each other? NOT that nobody can communicate?… because like I said everyone claims to know how to communicate yet we’re all still out here crying into our weetabix so what’s the truth. Where’s the missing link?
Anyway I’m going to go and figure this one out so if you have any thoughts please let me know in the comments! Am I talking shit? Am I stating the obvious or do you think I’m onto something? Also let me know what your love languages are I’m really interested to know! x