Friday, 05 March 2010 03:00 | and posted in Relationships
As a child or teenager you rely on your parents to supply the majority of your emotional need of love. However, depending on which love language they speak you may or not be receiving the love you need from them.
For example, if your dad speaks compliments and your mum hugs while you speak gifts, then unless your parents recognise this you may start to think your parent's don't love you very much because they hardly ever give you gifts.
Throw siblings into the mix and let's say your brother speaks action, while your sister speaks hugs, then your brother will have similar issues to you, while your sister will probably end up thinking she's loved by your mum and unwanted by your dad. You may even end up jealous of your sister and mum's closeness. This whole scenario is exacerbated in single parent homes as there's only one parental love language being spoken rather than two.
It doesn't take a qualificaion in psychology or counselling to begin to understand the roots of a lot of family issues. Any child (of any age 0 - 99 and even if they had good parents) can doubt if their mum or dad or both really love them, simply because they are not receiving love in a language they understand.
Can you see the potential open to your family if each of you learnt each others primary love language? You would know to give lots of hugs to your mum and sister, to compliment your dad at every opportunity, to offer to help out your brother when he's working on a project or when he's doing chores even (shock horror). Also they'd all know you receive their love through gifts and would start giving you little presents throughout the year to show how much they each love you.
Sound idealistic?? Maybe. We'd be naive to think there's not other issues like unforgiveness or stress, etc to deal with in families. But imagine if everyone was sure of each other's love then wouldn't that make a better home environment for these things to be sorted through?
Why not tell your family about the five languages of love at the dinner table tonight and suggest it'd be fun to work out what everyone's primary love language is. And see what happens.
Based upon Dr Gary Chapman's book, The Five Love Languages.
