What’s Your Self-Love Language?
It might be different than you’d expect.
The other day an Instagram post caught my eye and made me think about self-care in a whole new context. Beautifully designed with cheery, bright colors and bold, handwriting-style font, the illustration posed a curious question:
What’s your self-love language?
Until I saw this artist’s post, I had only ever thought of the love languages in terms of how I give love and how I best receive love from others.
So her question gave me pause.
What are the languages I use to take care of myself? How do I communicate with my own body and mind?
And when I thought about it, I was surprised to realize that the way I show love to myself is very different than the ways that I relate to others in love.
What’s a love language, anyway?
Dr. Gary Chapman originally published his book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate in 1992, but I didn’t learn about love languages until twenty years later, when a friend mentioned the book to me — I think she had read it for a sociology class in college.
Of course, now the phrase “love language” gets thrown around a lot.
Just now, I searched #lovelanguage on Instagram and 215,858 posts popped up. So people are familiar with the concept — that there are specific and varied ways we express love and process other peoples’ expressions — at least, familiar enough to joke that coffee, kombucha, and tacos are their “love languages.”
I tell people, only half-joking, that snacks are my love language. We’ll talk about that later.
In complete transparency, I’ve never read Dr. Chapman’s book. A Baptist minister, Dr. Chapman used his Christian background to color the book’s message and it initially was most popular with Christian married couples. Dr. Chapman asserts that his book is for everyone, though, and obviously the audience has grown in the nearly thirty years since the book was published.
While I’ve foregone reading the book entirely, I’ve read articles about the love languages and I took the quiz on Chapman’s website that helps you identify the love languages you want your partner to communicate with — the ones that are how you best receive love from others.
Why do love languages matter?
As with any language, love languages are a tool for communication, and you can use them more effectively when you understand how to interact with them.
I like to have the vocabulary to describe my experiences and my relationship with the world. I know my Myers-Briggs (ISTJ), my TrueColor (Gold-Blue), my Hogwarts house (Slytherin), and the zodiac sign that suits me (I’m born a Sagittarius, but I’m on the cusp and Capricorn is 100%). Learning about how “experts” categorize me — based, albeit, on my own self-reporting — helps me understand how to talk about my needs, desires, and challenges.
(That, plus the animal for Capricorn is a goat, and I love goats.)
Learning about love languages can help you understand what you need in order to feel appreciated and cherished. Familiarity with the love languages gives you the tools to ask for what you need — and the knowledge to shape your own behavior so that you can show your love in your loved ones’ preferred languages, too.
When I took the official 5 Love Languages quiz, the algorithms ranked my love languages in what basically ended up being a sliding scale:
- Quality Time (9 points out of 30)
- Acts of Service (8 points out of 30)
- Words of Affirmation (7 points out of 30)
- Physical Touch (6 points out of 30)
And “gifts” came in at fifth place with zero points.
(My scores were less binary than most people’s, I guess. The notes on my results said that most people have one or two main languages that score highest.)
So it’s kind of true that snacks are my love language. If I care about you, I’m going to cook for you. I’m going to make snacks for you. Making and serving food is one of my main “acts of service.” I’m also going to keep the house clean, take care of your pet, wash your clothes, pick up that thing you needed from Target, and anything else I can do to be helpful.
I value both showing love and receiving love via acts of service. I feel cared for and valued when my partner or a friend choose to do me an unsolicited favor. In fact, I give and receive love through all four of my main languages, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes, a person might mostly show love through words of affirmation but might feel most loved when they receive gifts from a loved one.
Here’s what’s really interesting to me, though: when I thought about my love languages in terms of self-care, my list completely scrambled.
Whereas my outward-facing communication looked like:
- Quality Time (9 points)
- Acts of Service (8 points)
- Words of Affirmation (7 points)
- Physical Touch (6 points)
I’m pretty sure that my self-love languages go like this:
- Physical Touch
- Acts of Service
- Quality Time
- Words of Affirmation
(And “gifts” remains pretty much unranked here.)
For me, those languages look like:
- Comfortable clothes, snuggly blankets, furry animals, hot baths and showers, hair conditioners, body lotion, self-manicures, hot tea (physical)
- Organizing, cleaning, planning and adhering to a schedule, meal prepping, exercising, therapy, spending time outside (service)
- Reading, quiet time with animals (time)
- Journaling (words)
So now what?
Now that I’ve taken the time to actively consider the best ways I receive love from myself, and not just from others, I feel like I have a paradigm through which to view my self-care.
From here, I can use this framework to guide my activities in a broader sense. I’m better able to make deliberate choices to improve my health and happiness.
So first off, I’m going to schedule some time for a bubble bath and a hair mask.
How about you?
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