Language of Love

Troy, seen here with Ascot Rotarian, Ros, decided that because today was Valentine's Day he would talk to us about 'the language of love'.  He started by having us listen to a Led Zepplin song.  The song was actually written as a reminder of a visit to Iceland by the song writer - it was our chance today to learn something new.

 

Our other new thing that we learned today included better understanding the differences between the "intention" of one person and whether it met the "perceptions" of the receiver of that message.  There is often a gap between the two, and in Troy's words "Perception interpretation will always trump intention".  So we need to 'mind the gap'.

 

Troy drew our attention to a book written by Gary Chapman called "The 5 Love Languages".  They are words or actions taken by one partner and either seen by the other partner as something that either enhances the partnership or doesn't enhance the partnership.  When they don't match with the perception of the receiving partner it sometimes leads to a misunderstanding, which could easily escalate into something bigger. 

 

We all have our preferred way of 'showing we love our partner' and these generally fall into one of five categories - words of affirmation; spending quality time with them; giving gifts to them; doing acts of service for them and physical touch.  So if my preferred way of showing my love is to engage in acts of service, but my partner's preferred way of doing things is that they want to receive words of affirmation, then my act of service may not be seen as an 'act of love'. 

 

Very interesting thoughts.  I'm sure most of us will take our questionnaires that we filled in this morning and get our partners to fill it in - and then we could have some interesting conversations about how well our"languages of love" match.

 

Thanks Troy for a fun and thought provoking session this morning.