Gravity of Love

I recently read an article that references a study done about love. Specifically, the study's co-authors quizzed their subjects about various scenarios where they were asked to guess how a majority of people would respond to those scenarios. At the end, the co-authors of the article narrowed everything down to four things that would likely make most people feel loved. Those four things are follows...

• When someone shows compassion toward them during difficult times
• When a child snuggles up to them
• When their pets are happy to see them
• When someone tells them "I love you"

There's nothing terribly earth-shattering contained therein. No doubt most of us enjoy having someone say they love us (unless it's in a Fatal Attraction kind of way), and who isn't happy to be treated well, and have their pets glad to see them? So, yeah, these four things make sense, and nearly amount to a dog-bites-man story.

Of course, this got me thinking. Something that crossed my mind was a quiz I took awhile ago. There's a book titled The 5 Love Languages, by Gary Chapman, and it's about the various ways we can stay in love. Not necessarily fall in love, but stay in love. Falling in love is easy, the rest can sometimes be tricky. I'm reminded of the scene in All the Money in the World, when billionaire J. Paul Getty (played by Christopher Plummer) is talking to someone about his book, How to Be Rich. He emphasis the "be" in the title, and says, "Anyone can get rich. Being rich is another matter." I may be paraphrasing there, but you get the gist.

If you google The 5 Love Languages, one of the first things that pops up is an official quiz. It doesn't take to long to do, and I found the results to be interesting. After establishing whether you're a teenager or adult, and if you're single or in a relationship, the questions asked all start the same way, with: "It's more meaningful to me when... " That intro is followed by two things that someone can do for you, and which one impacts you more. You select one, then go on to the next question. An example of situations to choose from are:

'It's more meaningful to me when...

I receive a loving note/text/email for no special reason from my love one

or

My partner and I hug'

Which one of those would you choose? If you don't have a partner, you can substitute the word friend.

Here's another example:

'It's more meaningful to me when...

My partner does things for me instead of just talking about doing nice things

or

I feel connected to my partner through a hug'

You get the idea. There's a lot of comparisons between acts of service and physical touch, gift giving and physical touch, words of affirmation vs. quality time, etc. You can see the breakdown of my results below...

As you can probably tell, I am most impacted by acts of service. When someone -- it can be Ashley, or even a friend -- does something nice for me, well, that means a lot. So does quality time. If I like you enough to partner with you or be your friend, then spending time together would certainly be a high point of my day/week/month. Gifts are always nice, of course, as are words of affirmation.

In last place, way down at just seven percent, is physical touch. That shouldn't be read as having no interest in it, but, I dunno, you can be physical with anyone, right? It doesn't necessarily equate to love, at least that's how I see it. It's more meaningful to me when someone says they love me, or that they appreciate me, or are proud of something I've done. When they take the time to reach out and just see how I'm doing, or make the effort to do something nice for me -- that's what means a lot.

How about you? What is most impactful to you when it comes to interactions with a partner, or a friend, or loved ones? What makes you feel loved? Is that even important to you? You'd be surprised how many people purport not to even care about love.