Gone to DC, please stay tuned! (back on Friday)

Well, I’m finally off to DC today at 7:00 a.m. and in a whole lot better mood thanks to you all! Your cheery and encouraging comments really helped make my day and turn things around for me on Saturday.

Sunday was a really good day too! Got a few last-minute things done after going out to visit with my Mom. I’m bringing Anne Rice’s “Taltos” in case I can’t sleep well in the hotel. Eastern time is an hour earlier, plus I will be getting up VERY early to get ready for the event each day. I might have read that book already, but it’s handy to have a book on the plane too. I’m also bringing a CD player and a few tunes to make the flight seem faster.

But a comment made by Anvilcloud made me really think about my expectations of my son. Anvilcloud is right, young men really don’t care a lot about the hysterical (well, I wasn’t quite that bad, but was upset) feelings of their mothers! And that’s quite right and normal. But I got to thinking about the whole single parent and child thing and it made me just a bit uncomfortable. Many of the single parents I’ve noticed (and myself included) sometimes expect too much of our children, especially our adult children! I cringe to think that I sometimes may treat him more closely as a partner than my adult child, and that’s certainly squirm-worthy. It’s not that I mean to or even realize when I’m doing it. But it’s not healthy for either the parent, and especially not for the child (even if an adult child). He has his own life, social relationships and focus.

In my own defense, I didn’t think expecting him to listen to my work problems for 5-10 minutes was so terrible or excessive when he contributes very little to the household. But that brings up yet another uncomfortable issue: does that mean I think I can buy his time and attention because I’m paying the bills—that he owes me that? Yikes, that’s yucky to even think about! Guess I just thought that he would WANT to listen because he’s my son and I’m his mother. But it’s lots more complicated than that. Yes, sigh, I think about things too much sometimes, but feel it’s preferable to thinking about them too little!

The Five Languages of Love
All that thinking led me to recall something I had read a long time ago about the “Five Languages of Love” which was a book written for couples. But I think the languages of love apply to friendships and family, too. The book brings up the fascinating question: how do you know when someone loves you? For me that’s easy to answer and I bet if you’ve read even a couple of my postings you can guess—I know when someone loves me when they LISTEN to me!!! And my second indicator would be when they spend time or hang out with me. It’s true of my romantic relationships and true of my friendships and family. And I would rank physical touch third in a romantic relationship, only after the first two had been well established!

If I’m remembering them correctly, the five indicators (or “languages of love”) are:

1. Physical touch: including hugging, touching on the arm or back or any touch, and sex
2. Words: talking and especially listening and discussion
3. Quality time: spending time with each other or hanging out together
4. Gifts: giving a tangible object
5. Acts of service: doing little (or big!) things, chores, activities for the loved one

While it’s impossible to generalize, we’re all different, the studies showed that men tend to do and want #1 and #5, while woman tend to like the #2 and #3 as their top two indicators. The #4 choice was higher in women, too, if I remember correctly. I think men also ranked #3 fairly high.

Now it gets more tricky because there are two sides to the question:

1. How do you know when someone loves you (the top two or three methods you prefer to RECEIVE love)?

2. What are your top two or three preferred methods of SHOWING your love?

Answers to the two questions can be different! In fact, the answers need to be different to different friends, lovers or family members because they’re requiring different languages of love from you! As an example, Vegetable Man when I first got to know him spent a lot of time (and money!) bringing me things and doing little things for me. Although it may sound ungrateful, it wasn’t what I wanted from him. For one thing, it’s difficult to keep guessing what another person would like or things they would like you to do! There’s a large chance of guessing wrong quite a bit of the time. We both were a little frustrated in the very beginning of the relationship, about 16 years ago.

As he got to know me better, he realized that discussion and spending quality time together were what I wanted (and they led to #1!). He, on the other hand, is cheered by physical touch, a hand on his arm, or a back rub. He also feels loved when people do little services for him. I had to learn his language of love, as the doing little services thing did not come naturally to me because I didn’t value receiving it as much as some of the other ways of expressing love.

So dating services should be asking those two questions about how the person wants to give and receive love to check for compatibility. And wouldn’t it make a great topic of conversation with your friends, family and with new acquaintances? What a fascinating subject and it all came back to me because of my distress yesterday and your cool comments in response!

Have a super week, and I’ll see you on Friday!