the results are in!...

according to our very scientific poll, we have discovered that the majority of the people i know (at least, among the 8 who read my blog and voted) are words of affirmation people! :D

here's the break-down:

Words of Affirmation: 5 votes (62%!)
Sevice: 0 votes (0%)
Quality Time: 3 votes (37%)
Physical Touch: 0 votes (0%)
Gifts: 0 votes (0%)

for those of you who don't know what any of this means, the theory behind it comes from a book by Gary Chapman called The Five Love Languages.

in essence, his book argues that we each speak an emotional love language that is as real and different from other emotional languages as spoken languages are from each other, such as Chinese, German, and English.

"If we speak only our primary language and encounter someone else who speaks only his or her primary language, which is different from ours, our communication will be limited. We must rely on pointing, grunting, drawing pictures, or acting our ideas. We can communicate, but it is awkward...If we are to communicate effectively across cultural lines, we must learn the language of those with whom we wish to communicate.
In the area of love, it is similar. Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different at Chinese from English. No matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other." (Ch 1)

the five languages between which we try to communicate, if you hadn't guessed, are the five categories in the poll - words of affirmation, serivce, quality time, physical touch, and gifts!

i, personally, am a words of affirmation person! i love to be congratulated, praised, encouraged, consoled, and adored through words. if you want to make me smile, write me a note, send me a text, or tell me in person that you think i look nice today, or that i'm a great person, or that you think i have excellent taste. seriously, i will melt all over the floor with joy! :)

my wordy nature also means that if you do something nice for me or if i just love yer face, most likely i will TELL you so and gush about it for a while - possibly even to the point where those of you who aren't word-people might wonder if i'm still being sincere. i am. i love to tell people how amazing they are. i promise i try to 'speak' other languages too by doing service, spending time with people with my phone off, etc, but my knee-jerk reaction will be to gush. :)

now, my father, who is a prince among men, is a gift person! when i realized this, my world finally made sense! when i do well in school, or perform in a show, or do something he wants to reward and love me for, i get taken out to dinner, flowers on closing night, or a box of chocolate! where i would expect/desire praise, i receive gifts. this used to confuse me, but now that i know he speaks through gifts, it is SO much easier to recognize when my father is saying 'i love you, i'm proud of you, i think you are wonderful' even when he isn't saying it out loud. :) and on the flip-side, it helps me to know how to love him best, since words don't have the impact on him that they would on me!

'ok...nice to know...why is this important to me?' you might ask. well, aside from the priviledge of knowing what makes me tick, i'm sharing this post because i personally believe that understanding which kind of love you speak helps people three-fold:

1) you can request to be loved the way you appreciate it most (yes, we need to be taught/teach how best to love each other!)
2) you will be able to see and make a plan to learn which kinds of love are more foreign to you
3) you will be more capable of recognizing the different ways people try to show their love to you outside of your language (when you do, you'll see that there is love coming at us CONSTANTLY, we just often don't see it for what it is!)

...and we could all use a little more of that, couldn't we? :)

so there you go - love is a many spendid thing as are the different languages and dialects within it that we speak! now go out there, figure out what makes YOU tick, and make someone's day by telling them you care in THEIR language! ;)