pl patterns

To die without your love knowing how you really feel…

…must be the worst fate imaginable.

Question: How do you communicate how you really feel? How do you let your love know that she is loved? Really loved. You know you love her… but does she really get it? I struggled with these questions for a long time. Being naturally bad at communicating due to [programmers’ Asperger’s](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2004/08/20.html) didn’t help. Last year, though, I stumbled on [_The Five Love Languages_](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1881273105?ie=UTF8&tag=plpatterns-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1881273105). The premise of the book is that there are concrete ways to communicate love and appreciation for another person (all forms of it, not necessarily romantic). The author gives many examples and shows a pattern among them. The ways to communicate love can be grouped into 5 categories, each embodying a “love language”.

According to Chapman, the 5 languages are:

• Words of Affirmation
• Quality Time
• Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

Think of a time in your life when you really felt loved. That one time… Was it when someone told you were great at something you thought you were lousy at? Was it when you hung out together at the bus station because the bus was late, and ended up talking for hours? Was it the time years ago that you received a gift, that maybe wasn’t expensive, but meant so much to you that you cherish it to this day? Was it the time someone trudged out in the pouring rain for you, so you didn’t have to? Or was it the time someone embraced you, at just the right moment?

We naturally try to give what we think is valuable. But the more I learn about other people, the more I learn that different people are different. They value different things. They think differently. They perceive the world differently.

If you really care about someone, give them what they want, not what you wish others would give you.

This is quite possibly the only book I have ever read that I think would be valuable for any person on the planet. Maybe how to communicate love is obvious to some people, but it was never obvious to me.