Lost in translation?

I've been soooo busy these last few months that I sadly have not written any blogs.

I'm sure I'll have something to write about food or fashion soon, but as Christmas is drawing near I thought it was timely to talk about love.

Love languages, a concept written about by Gary Chapman (in his multiple best-selling books), is a huge factor, or perhaps the only factor, that determines whether people feel loved. The number of friends a person has, what their family is like, or whether they are in a romantic relationship or not is all secondary; having people in your life who speak your love language is what really affects our feelings.

While I'm not going to try to summarise Chapman's extensive writing on the subject, if you don't know, the 5 languages are Acts of Service, Gifts, Physical Touch, Quality Time and Words of Affirmation. Not everybody feels loved through all these expressions. I suggest you pick up some of his books if this is all new to you. However, I do think a thing or two is missing from Chapman's books, and more to the point, a lot of information is missing from the basic information which is passed on by word of mouth only by people who may or may not have read the books.

I think a lot of the ins and outs of love languages get lost in translation! Tonight's re-translation is on Quality Time.

Chapman states for someone whose primary way of receiving love is quality time, it is the quality, the meaningfulness, the benefit, the depth of conversation or the enjoyment of the shared activity, that detetmines whether love is felt or not, hence the title of 'quality time' and not just 'time'

However, from my own experiences as someone whose primary love language is quality time, I find a short amount of time with a friend to be incredibly unsatisfying. When someone allocates me an hour between activities I feel like just another thing on their to-do list. And if I haven't seen someone for ages, I take a while to open up to them. I am aware that this might not be the most mature approach but I subconsciously gauge how much someone cares about me by whether they stick around for long enough for me to be forced to tell them something other than the mundane ins and outs of my week (and believe me, telling you what happened in my week or hearing about your activities doesn't do much for the quality of the time, either). 

And, it's not just me: I checked with other quality-time-primary-love-language-people too. The longer there is quality time, it's like the longer the love-tap is turned on, filling us up. I have an unsubstantiated theory that filling multiplies around the 3 hour mark. Or maybe it's that the love matures like a good bottle or red. Some brilliant metaphor definitely to illustrate my hypothesis. 

So, want to make your quality-time-speaking friend feel super loved this Christmas? Give them a chunk of your time longer than 2 hours. Or even a whole day. 10 minutes just doesn't cut it, no matter how hard you are trying.

I hope this information helps you understand and love on your friends a bit more.

Love, S