How Did You Learn to Give Love?
Walking down the roads that lead to your love language
Love and connection are fundamental needs that shape our self-concept and emotional development.
And just like we all need to receive love, we also have a powerful drive to give love. When our way of showing that we care is not recognized, accepted, or valued, our sense of worth actually diminishes over time.
There are endless ways to show love, but they fall into five broad categories known as love languages.
- Words of Affirmation
- Physical Touch
- Quality Time
- Acts of Service
- Gifts
Love languages are patterns of behaviour that we acquire in childhood. Most people tend to give and receive love in the same language. For instance, they feel most valued when they receive gifts, and they express their own feelings through gifts as well.
Others are bilingual. They learned to give love in one language and receive it in another. So, they may not like giving gifts themselves, but they really enjoy receiving them. Or they may enjoy giving gifts but not receiving them.
In my previous article, we looked at how we learn to receive love mostly through abundance and lack. Here, we are going to explore some of the ways we learn to give love.
Lack
Remember, lack is not absence. Absence suggests that it was not there at all, while lack means there wasn’t enough of it. This is important to keep in mind when speaking about love.
When we are in environments where our love language is not spoken, we tend to form the belief that we are not loved. Sometimes this is true. Some people just don’t love us. But, it is often the case that we simply don’t recognize the other love languages as expressions of love.
I suspect the people who learned a love language through lack are the ones who like to receive love in that same language.
If we are rarely exposed to a particular love language, such as gift-giving, we don’t form any associations between gifts and love. But if we were exposed to it enough for it to register as love but not enough for it to satisfy our needs, then we experienced a lack.
If you acquired your love language through lack, you may be moved to give it to others. You know how good it feels to receive gifts, so you want to recreate that experience for others, perhaps as a way to make up for that lack.
This style of relating is a popular TV trope. It is the parent who showers their child with gifts because that is how they would have wanted to be loved growing up. It is a wonderful approach if the child also speaks gifts. It’s not so great when what they really need is quality time.
It may also be the case that you are unconsciously letting people know how you would like to be loved in return. The problem is that they may not realize that and respond the way you want them to.
So, recognizing when you are giving love to fill a void at the expense of someone else’s needs is a great (read: uncomfortable) step to improving your relationship with them. It lets you then build up the courage to ask for the kind of love you need overtly instead of covertly.
Positive Reinforcement
On a happier note, your giving love language could be a behaviour you were positively rewarded for as a child. More importantly, nobody punished or shamed you when you didn’t show love in that way. Nobody expected you to give gifts or help out around the house, but they were delighted when you did.
Punishment is negative reinforcement that creates a deep sense of resentment in people. I use the term punishment broadly. In this case, it refers to any response that made you feel rejected, frightened and helpless. Anything that made you feel like a “bad child.” Children internalize these feelings and will go to great lengths to avoid the pain of isolation. Even if it means going against themselves.
Behaviour that a child adopts to avoid shame and punishment is not a genuine expression of love. It is a survival strategy. This is especially true when that behaviour is not in alignment with their personalities, values, needs, or interests.
So, if you do something because you feel like you have to or else…, you are not doing it out of love; you are doing it out of fear.
It is possible for someone who grew up in a dysfunctional dynamic to get their wires crossed and mistake self-abandonment and people-pleasing for love. Those patterns then become their instinctive ways of relating to others as adults. But their need for actual love remains unmet.
If you find yourself showing love in ways that make you feel resentful, empty, and bitter afterward, chances are you aren’t speaking your love language. You are engaging in a pattern that may have served you in the past but isn’t what you really want.
Giving love in your language should uplift and energize you. It is something you enjoy doing for its own sake not because it is expected of you.
The behaviours that were not expected of us but were still met with delight and positive affirmation felt like they were our choice. When something feels like an act of free will, we are inspired to do it, especially if it has a positive outcome for us and the people we love.
The adult gift-giver may have been the child who used to pick flowers for her mother while playing outside and bring them home. Her mother was pleased when she did it but never made her feel like she had to do it to earn her love and approval. She didn’t expect her to bring back flowers every time she went out to play. And she certainly didn’t make the child feel bad when she didn’t.
So, the little girl learned that giving gifts felt good. She felt seen, accepted, and loved when she did it, and it seemed to make Mom happy. Because it added to their mutual well-being without taking anything away from them, it eventually became a pure expression of her love.
The acts of love that were positively reinforced but not demanded felt so good because we had nothing to lose by not doing them. We only had love to gain. That is why, as adults, it feels absolutely worth it to do them. And so, they become our native love language.
Takeaway
Whether you learned to speak a love language through lack of positive reinforcement, what you do with it now is in your hands. You can choose to learn a new love language for someone you love or surround yourself with people who value the kind of love you wish. Neither is better, and neither is worse. But keep in mind that receiving love in a different language is also a choice. And it is not a choice you can enforce.
Take care, guys.
If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more about the Five Love Languages, you may like these ones, too:
Hi, I’m Noemi, a certified relationship coach. I help you understand your patterns and cultivate self-love, confidence, and compassion to create the deep, fulfilling conscious relationships your heart desires.
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