Further thoughts on love languages, particularly my own

So, I'm feeling kinda lonely. This is after spending some good time with my best friend, my parents and my old friend who is visiting from Arkansas.

I think some of it has to do with the romantic-esq stuff I was talking about before, but I would wager it goes deeper than that. Getting into a relationship wouldn't automatically make me feel loved or whatnot.

I've been thinking through the five love languages stuff that I mentioned earlier. I've been trying to determine what my 'primary love language' is. A.K.A. "what makes me feel loved and how do I express it."

In his book, Chapman mentioned that one of the best ways to figure it out are to think back to experiences where you have felt really unloved and hurt. Through that, you can get a good idea what the opposite would be.

What comes to mind for me are the times where I have really been torn down verbally. The strongest examples of this come from my ex-gf, but there have been plenty of times with my friends where I have been hurt when a joke went to far, etc.

On the one hand, I would take that back to my childhood experiences where I was picked on and that is the source of my sensitivity. But, I wonder if my sensitivity comes more because that is how I feel loved.

With the other four love languages, I can easily rule out some of them.

receiving Gifts has never been a huge thing for me. Of course, I enjoy getting a nice gift once in awhile, but getting stuff doesn't do much for me. That also causes me to not give gifts to others as much, but that is another thing entirely.

Acts of Service... As far as chore based stuff, that isn't something that bothers me very much. If the kitchen or whatever gets really bad then I get annoyed, but not much until that point. Certainly I enjoy serving in some ways, but I don't usually look for ways that I can serve someone unless I have a reason to.

Physical Touch is a bit more ambiguous. I think it isn't my top love language but it is certainly higher than the previous two. For example, I enjoy giving and receiving hugs, and I enjoy people messing with my hair. I also really enjoy messing around with people (such as poking or tickling) and I don't mind giving the occasional massage, but that doesn't happen too often. I think I might have a good sense of physical touch, but I don't typically feel hurt if I don't get a hug from someone. I need to ponder this more.

Quality Time. This one is also a little hard because I enjoy spending quality time with people. I think I'm a pretty good listener so I'm more than content to spend awhile listening to someone and adding my thoughts to the conversation once in awhile. I also find myself often wishing one of my friends was on IM that I have good conversations with, especially if I'm having a bad day because I would rather do that most of the time than watch a movie or play a game.

So I'm not sure really. I mean, I would argue that there are many different parts of the five love languages that help me to feel loved, especially in quality time, physical touch and words of affirmation. I think that out of those, there are particular ones that make me feel more loved than others.

I'm wondering if part of my unease tonight is that I'm missing out on some of what makes me feel loved. Even just considering tonight, I got plenty of awesome hugs and got to mess around with my friend, so I'm not really lacking much in physical touch. I also have been able to spend some good time with my mom today and somewhat with my friend, although she was also trying to spend time with her other friends.

This brings me back to my original conclusion that my 'primary' love language is along the lines of words of affirmation. Of course, within that there are many of what Chapman would call 'dialects,' so perhaps there is a particular type of affirmation that really sets me off (in a good way).

Like I said before, being torn down verbally can be really painful for me, but what tends to lift me up. As I think about it, as much as I enjoy being behind the scenes, I really do love it when I get acknowledgement of what I'm did, even though I do tend towards some false humility and embarrassment when someone brings it up. I kinda want to spend some time thinking back to my romantic relationships and try and figure out what were the moments which really made me feel loved. But, at the moment, it is late and to be honest I fear too much of the pain to try and really go into it tonight.

That's all I got for now. I hope this makes sense in the morning. I feel really frazzled at the moment and I really have no idea why. Good Night everybody.