{"id":18168,"date":"2019-09-29T09:59:24","date_gmt":"2019-09-29T16:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/?p=18168"},"modified":"2021-04-20T12:06:32","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T19:06:32","slug":"n-love-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2019\/09\/29\/n-love-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"n love languages"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Gary Chapman\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Five_Love_Languages\">five love languages<\/a> paradigm categorizes the kinds of things that make people feel loved\/valued. Here\u2019s the original list:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>receiving gifts<\/li>\r\n  <li>quality time<\/li>\r\n  <li>words of affirmation<\/li>\r\n  <li>acts of service<\/li>\r\n  <li>physical touch<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>I find this general paradigm useful\u2014the idea that different people have different modes and approaches that make them feel valued\u2014but I want to expand it in a couple of different ways. (These ideas are mostly not original to me.)<\/p>\r\n<p>First of all, the general paradigm applies to situations other than romantic love. Chapman agrees; he\u2019s written or co-written several books that generalize the idea to other situations. So instead of framing it as \u201clove languages\u201d per se, I\u2019m inclined to frame it in terms of things that make someone feel valued. I\u2019ll say <i>value languages<\/i> in this post, though I feel like that\u2019s not nearly as catchy a phrase as <i>love languages<\/i>.<\/p>\r\n<p>Also, my impression (without having read the books) is that Chapman assumes that what people do for others is generally what they want for themselves. That may often be true, but I feel like someone can have one kind of thing that makes them feel valued, and another kind of thing that they do when trying to make others feel valued. For example, one might want physical touch for oneself, but engage in acts of service for others.<\/p>\r\n<p>Another expansion: I think that sometimes there can be an interesting subtle inversion of the categories: sometimes doing something <em>for someone else<\/em> can make the <em>doer<\/em> feel valued. This is different from looking at how people try to express valuing others\u2014that is, if you do something nice for someone, you might be expressing the fact that you value them, or it might be that doing it makes you feel more valued by them. (Or both, of course.) (And obviously those aren\u2019t the only reasons one might do something nice.)<\/p>\r\n<p>And finally, I think there are a variety of other categories that can be value languages. Some of them are more-specific subcategories of the five original ones; others don\u2019t fit neatly (imo) into the original five categories. Here are some examples off the top of my head\u2014I\u2019m sure that one could squeeze most of these into one or another of the original categories, but I\u2019m more interested in looking at them as different areas than in trying to fit each of these into exactly one of the original five. I\u2019m framing these from the recipient\u2019s point of view, but they also work from the giver\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\r\n<p>(Content warning for inclusion of a couple of items that are not necessarily good for a relationship.)<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>Specific subcategories\u2014for example, you might value different kinds of physical touch differently. High fives, or holding hands, or massages, or gentle touch-in-passing, or sexual interaction, or snuggling, or being tightly held, or being tied up\u2014if you feel valued by one of those kinds of touch, it doesn\u2019t necessarily mean you like all of them.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Another example of specific subcategories: I gather that <i>quality time<\/i> in this context mostly means someone giving you their full attention. But I feel like conversation is one kind of attention, attentive listening is another kind, focusing attention on you even in larger-group social situations is another kind, and so on.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Shared physical activity per se\u2014like dancing together, or going on hikes together. Might overlap with quality time and\/or physical touch, but seems to me to be in a category of its own.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Time together without much interaction\u2014watching a movie or TV together, or sitting in the same space while working quietly on different projects. I would have put this into the quality time category, but I gather that Chapman explicitly indicates that this kind of thing is not quality time by his definition.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Music\u2014someone serenading you, or playing music for you, or singing you a song, or singing with you. (I guess these are acts of service, sorta kinda.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>Acts of creation\u2014someone writing you a poem, or writing you a song, or writing you a letter, or making visual or tactile art for you, or creating a meal for you. Could overlap with gifts and\/or words of affirmation and\/or acts of service.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Sharing\/recommending art\u2014someone who knows your tastes well telling you that they think you\u2019ll like a particular movie or song, for example.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Sympathy\u2014someone providing sympathy when you\u2019re distressed or upset.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Downtime\u2014someone giving you the solo space and time that you need.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Compersion (generalized; doesn\u2019t have to be about romantic love)\u2014someone liking the connection that you share with someone else.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Public acknowledgment\u2014someone making clear to others that they value you.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Reaching out\u2014someone contacting you from a physically separate location, in a medium you\u2019re comfortable with, to let you know that they\u2019re thinking of you. (Maybe a subcategory of words of affirmation.)<\/li>\r\n  <li><em>Initiating<\/em> contact\u2014someone going out of their way to suggest getting together or making other plans, rather than waiting for you to contact them.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Appreciation\u2014someone explicitly thanking you or otherwise making clear that they appreciate something that you\u2019ve done. (Maybe a subcategory of words of affirmation.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>Money\u2014in a work situation, for example, someone giving you a raise or a bonus in appreciation of your work. (Kind of like a gift, but not quite the same thing imo.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>Supporting your work and other activities\u2014whether providing financial support, liking your artistic creations, admiring your abilities, or helping you do stuff.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Partnership\u2014collaborating with you on a project or a job or a creative work.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Decisionmaking\u2014someone might help make decisions for you if you want them to, or might leave decisions in your hands if you prefer that.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Advising\u2014someone giving you advice about something that you need advice about. Or, on the other hand, someone not giving you unsolicited advice when they know you don\u2019t want it.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Responsiveness\u2014someone getting back to you quickly when you send them some kind of a message.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Jealousy\u2014someone expressing jealousy when other people express (say) romantic interest in you. (I\u2019m not saying this is a positive thing; this is a descriptive list, not a prescriptive one. But I do have friends who\u2019ve said that a partner\u2019s jealousy makes them feel valued.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>Fighting\u2014someone trusting you enough to be willing to argue with you. (I recognize that this is a complicated and potentially fraught topic, but thought it was worth mentioning.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>Vulnerability\u2014someone expressing something to you in a way that leaves them emotionally vulnerable.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Sharing secrets\u2014someone telling you things that they don\u2019t usually tell people.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Admiration\u2014someone seeing you as being particularly good at something. (If they say so in words, then this is part of words of affirmation, but not all admiration is expressed in words.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>Respect\u2014might include, for example, someone seeing you as a person, not treating you badly, not engaging in all sorts of common bad behaviors.<\/li>\r\n  <li>Trust\u2014someone making clear that they trust you, in various ways and various contexts.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>I\u2019m sure there are lots more. What are some approaches or actions that make you feel valued?<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,119,15,22,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity","category-favorite-entries","category-friendship","category-relationships","category-socializing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18168"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18182,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18168\/revisions\/18182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}