Languages of Affection
Last week, a friend and I had a conversation that had me thinking about affection and how people convey it. He mentioned that some people have put methods or languages of showing affection in categories including words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, physical touch. Everyone differs in the way they display affection (and in different types of relationships).
In every movie or show in the mainstream, you will find that someone will say "I love you" or something similar to another person. Then, they would give some form of physically affection depending on the type of relationship. Those are the two methods are used most often in mainstream entertainment; in many, the words of affirmation is what a character strived for throughout the entire movie.
Growing up, my parents would never say they loved me nor hugged me whether to console or congratulate me. They never expressed much emotion in general but I expect that is the culture they grew up to in China (It has contributed to the strong person I am now). But yet, I have never speculated that they didn't love me in the slightest and I didn't reassure myself that parents are suppose to love their child at all times. They worked (and still do) ridiculously hard to give the opportunity to my siblings and me to go to earn a good living. As with my parents, I feel that I use acts of service and quality of time significantly more than the others. As with spoken languages, you use what you know; I knew only those two for the most part.
When I left my parents house for college or work, I realized that my parents had expressed more words of affirmation because the amount of acts of service they could do for me were limited with the distance between us. It was definitely something I am still adjusting to. Before my junior year in college, I tended to stray away from all expression of affection except acts of service; I was never comfortable with hugs. This led to many conflicting social experiences with majority of my friends since they had experienced all five languages of affection. I'm not sure how effective my actions were in communicating that I admired their friendship since I didn't show affection through the means (especially through words, touch, gifts (Poor college kid)). I have been working on improving on showing my emotions through those other techniques.
After pondering on this subject, I realized that some people don't comprehend or appreciate certain approaches to showing emotions. That's why it's important to be able to sense and assert affection in the various manners; so you can understand where others are coming from.