5 espressos the ultimate expression of love
Once upon a time — like, last spring — I woke up from an especially thick sleep to a shot of espresso, still hot, on my bedside table. When I eventually ambled into the light of the day, I discovered that my nice husband had made, brought me and thrown out four other shots of espresso before I woke up and drank the fifth.
A fairy tale of newlywed effort, sure, but also an “Act of Service,” which is my “love language,” one of five ways of wanting to be loved and showing love, explained in Gary Chapman’s socioself-help book, The Five Love Languages. Originally published in 1995 (when my love language was occasionally making eye contact with boys at school, and riding bikes up and down each other’s streets), the bestselling book is the kind of pop psychology that stays popular, new editions replacing themselves on bookshelves and Kindle lineups, having thin-sliced some problem of contemporary life in a way that’s both familiar and innovative enough to always feel right and true and useful.
After “Acts of Service,” my secondplace love language is “Receiving Gifts,” which is embarrassing, but also, yes (and maybe the Five-Espresso WakeUp was so endearing to me because it involved both of them); the others are “Words of Affirmation,” “Quality Time” and “Physical Touch.” You can take a quiz online, but you might know your language by sight.
I like any kind of astrological insight, personality test, life-typing, anything that acknowledges the themes and details of what is usually considered ephemeral, abstract, unknowable. Categorizing love like this makes for an easy target, but at least it makes an effort; as an ENFJ youngest-child Capricorn Rebel (and, I think, Ravenclaw, but I’m not of the Harry Potter universe, and can’t say for sure), I’m pulled toward emotional logic and organization, especially when it’s trying to connect people to each other, and extraespecially when it’s fun.
The central problem in most relationships is one of expectations — not communicating, understanding or meeting them — and the love languages, in a radical act of obviousness, establishes what those are for each person. My husband Simon’s love language is “Physical Touch,” which felt, at first, insane to me, because touch can come from anywhere, unattached to devotion or care. To him, though, it “reminds me that you exist, and that we’re close enough to touch.”
A love language is also about how you want to show love, which is why Simon wants to hug me when one of us is unhappy, and why I once spent a week constructing a Valentine’s Day set-piece out of dog gates, Christmas lights, paper hearts and ribbons, so I also make it an act of service to rub his back and hold his hand. This is what’s so fundamentally optimistic and clarifying about Chapman’s book, and probably why I’ve noticed it dropped on podcasts, on social media and in overheard relationship conversations: Someone else’s native tongue might be a foreign language, but you can learn it.
Every love language has something to do in a relationship, somewhere it’s just that I feel loved, most of all, when someone is willing to put their back into it, to show instead of tell — or touch — their love. Love, for me, is actions. The greatest expression of care and devotion I can think of is when I was, less fairytale-ishly, coming out of surgery, and my husband had my shoes lined up and ready for me to slide into so I wouldn’t have to hunt around for them while stoned and in pain and beyond ready to go home. He considered my experience, prepared a moment and made a bad day some percentage easier for me. He’s done many more demanding, time-consuming, fully committed acts of service in our relationship — like, trust me, many — but that small one, that and the fifth espresso cup, is what I think about most when I think about how I am loved. “You exist,” it says, a gesture of empathy not because it’s just nice, but because it’s the kind of nice that I need.