Tag Archives: parents

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Parents & Love Languages

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I was just thinking about this earlier today and I think I figured out some things about how my family works.  Now, these are just guesses, based on behavior, but it was an interesting brain exercise.

Mom:

I think my mom’s primary love language (at least with us kids) is Quality Time.  She got super unhappy with my sister and I for not scheduling something for Mother’s Day this year – just anything that involves us spending time with her.  She seems to love to talk to us one-on-one, even if it just is for coffee, lunch, or shopping. 

It does also explain why I have run into some issues with her regarding how we express love to each other, why I didn’t think that she was a primary love giving figure in my early life – because to her, spending time with me was showing affection, whereas I much would have preferred being told that I was cared for (Words of Affirmation is more prominent as my Love Language in my relationships with my family – both origin and choice – than Touch).  I think she could tell that that was not working for me as I got older and more invested that time with my sister (for whom Quality Time is a bigger thing).  As I got into my late teen years, she became more involved in my life again, giving more time, and I started to realize that this was how she was showing her love.

It does still cause some strife with us – since it is not one of my major love languages, I have some issues understanding why it is such a big deal to her to spend time with me, and why it is such a big deal to her if I can’t.  I try to give it to her, without understanding why it is so important, but since my priorities are in different places, I don’t always know when I’m going to cause a tense situation with regards to time.  This is something I am trying to understand.

Dad:
I think my dad’s primary love language is Acts of Service.  He takes care of things around the house, makes meals, helps us kids with our car problems, and runs errands for my mom, just because.

Since I grew up with my dad as my primary figure (as my mom got along better with my sister), I understand Acts of Service far better as a love language than Quality Time. To some extent I think I give Acts of Service as a Love Language because of this, because some of the ways I give love are the same as my dad did growing up – making meals, taking up emotional labor, doing research for people, and helping with various tech issues.  Even if they are not my favorite things to do, I do them so other people can have a little less burden on their lives because of what I do.

My mom wants my dad to care more about me and my sister spending time with him for Father’s Day, but I don’t think he wants to.  He’s never made a big deal out of it, but is willing to schedule things (and take on emotional labor) for my mom for Mother’s Day and regular date nights because he knows they matter to her.
Me:

I wonder how much neither of my parents speaking my primary family love language affected me growing up.  And I wonder how much of my primary family love language is because of how I grew up and how my parents expressed theirs.  Food for thought.

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Fathers

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I have had many fathers in my life–my own being but one of them. I admire good dads–kids take a lot of patience, myself included. Having not known any of these men before they became fathers, I cannot say for sure whether they were any different before they had kids–but I can hazard a guess that that is the case.

My own father has had a massive impact on my life–not limited to the fact that he provided 23 of my chromosomes, including the X that made me female. That’s just where it started. I’ve seen the pictures of him playing with me as a baby–there is a lot of love apparent in them. And there are a lot of pictures, since I am the eldest child. He was the one who taught me how to build model cars, and will still volunteer to help if I want to build one now. I was the one he taught all the things that traditionally one would teach to boys–fixing the roof when it rained, changing the oil, filters, and tires on a car (I know a lot of guys who never learned this), building, and the painting that comes with, as well as helping me with my math and science homework, especially when we got past my mom’s level of education on those subjects. He and my mom both taught me that there’s nothing I couldn’t do and to not be restricted in what I do or think just because I’m female.

My father told me once that he only really started to see and recognize my sister and I as fully intelligent persons at about seven or eight years old–because that’s when we were intelligent enough to start debating and discussing abstract things with him. Not that we weren’t human beings to him before that point, just that we could be recognized as independent, as separate from our parents.

Now, this is not to say that I agree with my father all the time. That is by far, not the case. He believes that you can’t love adopted kids in the same way you’d love your own biological children–not that he has any experience with this, since both my sister and I, his only kids, are biologically his kids. I believe that adopting kids is a responsible way to have children especially if one does not feel a biological imperative to give birth or partner a person who can give birth. On some issues I stand much further to the left than he does–birth control (including extramarital sex), the environment, and pre-21 alcohol consumption, just to name a few. He does not identify as feminist or even pro-feminist, but the beliefs he holds and the way he helped raise my sister and I puts him squarely in that camp.

Now, I will never be a father–that second X chromosome, the one my dad gave me precludes any genetic possibility of that and I believe that my body matches my mind, gender-wise, so no changing of that. I am content, in a way, to watch the fathers in my life and how they act towards their children, how they raise them, what values they instill in their progeny as they grow from babies to adults. I look at them and see active paternal involvement in the lives of their children–both minors and adults–which is something that was rare as few as two generations ago. We are the children of one of the first generations where a father was expected to have a hand in raising their kids–we are still dealing with the traditionally culturally ingrained idea that fathers don’t have to do this, but it is showing up in small ways.

I, for one, am glad I had my father in my life–I feel sorry for those who haven’t, or had one that was not a decent human being.