The way to a woman’s heart starts with the dishwasher
My partner doesn’t know it, but he is still basking in the afterglow of having unpacked the dishwasher the other day before he went to work.
He did it because he had a couple of spare minutes and he knew that my hips were sore.
I’m seven-ninths through the gestation of our third and most definitely final baby, and this dear little critter has no qualms about making its presence felt. When it started its little in utero flutterings, it was like being tickled by butterfly wings. Now it’s a squid at a rave.
Anyway, the point isn’t that a man did a single act of housework, and for that, he should be praised. The reason I was so delighted was because, above all else, my gratitude is fed by ‘‘acts of service’’.
Apparently, there are five love languages – words of affirmation, receiving gifts, quality time, physical touch and, my personal favourite, acts of service.
It’s a system that was pinned down by American marriage counsellor Gary Chapman, and while I can’t vouch for the science of it, I took the online quiz (the couples’ version) and the results fitted me pretty well.
It asks participants to choose between statements like, ‘‘It’s more meaningful to me when I hear praise from my partner OR when my partner gives me something that shows he/she was really thinking about me’’.
‘‘Acts of service’’ doesn’t mean worshipping at my altar. It basically translates as: ‘‘Please help. Please do stuff to make my life easier.’’
I’m not opposed to gifts, but nor do I want more stuff in my house that I have to find places for.
I’m fat with our squid baby, so my need for physical touch is fairly stifled, unless it’s in the form of foot massages.
Quality time is brilliant, and I do need to receive genuinely affirming words, but the thing that I crave the most is help.
I’m not too invested in Valentine’s Day. It’s a wee bit too forced and a whole lot too commercial to be particularly enchanting.
I like the idea of appreciating your partner, but not with chocolates because Countdown’s advertising told you to. It’s a little bit like that slight twinge of guilty failure as you post a friend’s birthday message online solely because Facebook reminded you to. Random Acts of Kindness Day (September 1, FYI) is far more enticing to an acts-of-service person like myself.
Back to the love languages. Yes, I told the quiz – it IS more meaningful when ‘‘my partner helps me with a task’’. When ‘‘my partner does nice things for me instead of just talking about doing nice things’’. When ‘‘my partner works on special projects with me that I have to complete’’.
It all sounds very perfunctory, but that’s my version of romance.
There is probably something innate about it all – my parents are both ‘‘acts of service people’’, which makes them wonderful house guests – but I also firmly believe that it’s a situational, needs-based thing.
I’ve compared notes, and know that there are a lot of other mothers out there whose love language is the same as mine. I’ve suggested a commune so that we can pool our resources and work with economies of scale when it comes to cooking dinner and cycling children through the bath – talks are in progress.
There also seem to be a great many men who have a higher physical touch quota than their partners. (‘‘Physical touch isn’t necessarily sexual,’’ the men protest. ‘‘Relay that to your nether regions,’’ I reply.)
I haven’t done the quiz on my kids, partly because if you asked them whether they wanted a hug or a present, they would be very curious to know what the gift was, and was it Lego, and since we appeared to be negotiating, could they please have even more Lego instead of, say, dinner that night?
I can hazard a pretty good guess about their priorities, however. Both of my boys are pretty self-contained creatures, but the four-year-old has an unconscious habit of crawling on to and into his safe people, to the extent where I suspect he’d climb inside their skin if he could.
His casual need for physical touch makes him a nuisance as a dinner table neighbour. When he is standing near me, he likes to be perched on my feet.
The six-year-old has never needed too much in the way of hugs, although he has enough empathy to understand that sometimes, physical touch is more about the other person. His thing, though, is quality time. He thinks a lot, and processes life slowly and carefully, so he needs time where someone will just hang out with him so that he can unpack the world as he experienced it that day.
As for my partner, after he unpacked that dishwasher, I told him no fewer than three times how much I appreciated it. Words of affirmation, you see. We may not have the same love language, but we’re slowly learning how to speak each other’s.
‘Acts of service’ doesn’t mean worshipping at my altar. It basically translates as: ‘Please help.’