THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES

I don't think Mark and I knew what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to pursue a long distance relationship. There wasn't much time for us to figure things out because I was originally wait listed for school, and found out the second week of July that I was officially accepted.  I had two weeks to get approved for a loan, move my entire life, find a place to live, figure out how I was going to get around because I wasn't bringing a car, and at this point we had only been dating for 6 or 7 months. Although we are both terrified of the unknown we were determined to try to make our relationship work. We have definitely had our ups and downs and continually work on effective communication because most of our "fights" revolve around a lack of communication or just miscommunication. I think a lot of our miscommunication comes from not understanding each other fully.

I recently started reading this short book called, "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman and it has given me new insight on how others communicate their love. Both Mark and I have different love languages and I now understand why Mark does and does not do certain things.

The book describes five different love languages which are:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch

I express my love through acts of service but appreciate it when someone displays their love for me with quality time. Mark on the other hand, expresses love through acts of service, but prefers to receive love through words of affirmation (you always have to tell him he looks good ;) I still get upset with him when we are Facetiming and he's on his phone because I truly appreciate when he spends quality time with me. I think I use to unintentionally equate how much quality time he spends with me to how much he loves me, but I now know how unfair that is because he simply expresses love in a different way.

It's interesting how we each have our own unique love language and encourage every couple to read the book. I bought this book used for $1.94 from a site called Dealoz. It's a 'search engine' that searches online markets and bookstores for new and used books and gives you the best prices. I've bought a lot of my textbooks from this site and haven't had a problem thus far.

Let us know what you're love language is <3

-A