In my last entry I hoped this book would give me advice on how to communicate my love language without sounding like a psychologist on some 80’s talk show.

It did.

It seems that I fall into a small segment of the population that expresses love in one language but who’s primary choice for receiving it is another.

The test said my primary was words of affirmation and my secondary was quality time. What I discovered through reading the book is that I express love, respect, appreciation, etc primarily through acts of service.

The author explains how to recognize the love languages of family, friends and coworkers. It took me ummm… almost 3 seconds to realize that the love language of most of my relatives is acts of service. Except for my brothers, I believe theirs’ are gifts. Well, I think Robert has a tie between acts of service and gifts. Anyway, whenever I’ve wanted people in my life to feel valued, I’d try to do something nice for them or give them a small gift.

On the other hand, when people try to do things for me it makes me kind of uncomfortable. I could, and a some point will, write a whole blog entry on this subject alone.

In the books it says if you use the wrong love language with someone you might even offend them. They gave an example of your roommate going away for a vacation and they’ve returned to find you’ve cleaned their bathroom. That’s something I’d do. Especially if they came from a place that had room service. Transitioning back into real life can be a little tough after a week of room service and housekeeping. But if acts of service is not their love language, they may think that you are thinking, they aren’t doing a good enough job keeping their space clean. To be honest, if it were me and my bathroom, I would have been quietly thinking the same thing. Weird, huh?

In fact, whenever a coworker, or worse supervisor, offers help I get a little paranoid. Yet if I have free time, I offer help to coworkers and superiors all the time. Just because I like to keep busy. Now, that I think about it, over the years on my job evaluations they say, Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Then I’d cringe a little inside. Hmmmm. I’m nowhere nearly a bad as I used to be but like I said, I’ll save all this for a future blog entry.

The solution for me was handing out more compliments and thank-yous myself. At the end of the night I find at least two people and tell them I enjoyed working with them (if I did). When given help with my work, instead of getting all paranoid I thank them for thinking of me. Then I started getting them back. The other day a nurse turned to me, before the shift even started, and told me how pleasant it was to be able to work with me. It was a nice way to start the night. I actually enjoy going to work again. Its a been a long time.

Edit: I also have to give credit to the friend that I emailed when I first started reading this book. She was the first one to tell me if I wanted to get affirming words I needed to give them and to start thanking and complimenting my new coworkers for a job well done.

Why I want to consume this can be summed up in an email I wrote to a friend. Here it is:

Actually I really did enjoy my last day. Surprisingly it was kind of sad. They threw me a party with a beautiful cake. They brought some vegan foods. Well, the cake wasn’t vegan but that didn’t stop me from having two slices. All week people were saying,” I don’t know what we’re going to do without you.” They’d tell me they’d miss me and how much they had appreciated me. I got tons of hugs. All of this made me sad… and a little mad. THAT WAS ALL I WANTED! Actually that was more than I wanted or needed. I just wanted a thank you at the end of the day. I wanted someone to noticed I killing myself trying to do the work of two people and do it well. You know every job I’ve ever quit with one exception has been because I didn’t feel appreciated. I’ve left jobs for less money because of this.

I’ve been skimming through a book I bought at church. Its called Love Languages for Singles. I took the test in back and my love language was a tie between “words of affirmation” and “quality time”. I scored 9 points out of a possible 12 in each of these but I really think “words of affirmation” is my number one. And so that I don’t keep repeating the same pattern of leaving job after job because I don’t feel appreciated I have to find a way of letting employers and coworkers know this. How though, its not like on my first day I can show up and say, “Hi, I’m Stephanie. My love language is “words of affirmation” If want to keep me I’ll be requiring at least one “thank you” a day and at least two compliments on work a week from somebody. Otherwise, I’ll assume I’m not doing a good job and feel the need to go elsewhere. Its really important for me to feel both useful and appreciated.” Ack! Just rereading that it sounds like something a psychologist would suggest you say on one of those 80’s talk shows. Remember those? I remember watching them and listening to their advice thinking, Who talks like that? Maybe the book will give me some advice on how to communicate this.

Edit: In all fairness, during my last 6 weeks I was hearing more of what I needed and feeling more apprciated but the job search was already underway. I was already interviewing.