Mutilingualism
Love is lost among my many languages
I speak and/or understand five languages.
Before your impressed bell starts ringing, you should know the four that are not my mother tongue are like a cholent in my brain: all the leftovers mixed into a pot with zero consistency in how the lingual stew will turn out.
For example: I was once on a tram in Geneva and a woman asked me - in French - if I knew what time the stores closed for the afternoon break. My answer should have been: “Normalement, á treize heures”. What came out: “Uh, slosh esreh ore”. English, Hebrew and Italian. I shook my head, trying to sort out the stirred language martini, but she walked away before I could find the right words.
Multilingualism is a blessing and a curse. And it certainly didn’t help me figure out love language.
You’d think someone who can hold a conversation in almost any country in Europe and the Middle East could easily translate love languages, but no. I read The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman almost 20 years ago. The book first hit the NYT bestseller list in 2007 and stayed there for six years. Even today, 30 years since it was first published, people still reference that book. It came up in a conversation between a doctor and a patient recently, which is why I started thinking about it again.
I read it shortly after Jeff and I married. I was pregnant and still a bit angry about my failed first marriage. I didn’t want to mess this one up (my skewed view at the time; if you’ve read the Girl in the Gold Bikini, you know the story) so I read 5LL with the hope of better understanding of how to tune into my husband and ensure this marriage succeeds.
After reaching the last page, I couldn’t put my finger on my own love language, let alone my husband’s. I was even more confused than when I started reading. I was unable to determine my preferred method of expressing and receiving love. I craved them all: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. And like the multiple languages I already spoke, these were muddled for me.
I hesitate to say this, but I know now that my trauma was getting in the way.
When you grow up as I did, with an absent father and a controlling mother, you can’t build a solid foundation for love. Love was conditional. If I did things the way my mother wanted me to, she could offer me words of affirmation and physical touch. She made sure I heard that my father’s lack of quality time and me not receiving gifts (or child support) was proof he didn’t love or care about me. Acts of service were cloaked in manipulation and coercion (if you need me to do something for you, you have to address my needs first).
I spent most of my teenage and early adult years pursuing the wrong men, the wrong jobs, and the wrong dreams. I sought approval and would do anything to get it. By the time I was a full-grown adult, love was a foreign language. I was so used to be ignored, made to feel inadequate, unimportant and unworthy, that I became uncomfortable when the goods feelings landed in my lap. I was terrible at accepting loving gestures, always suspicious of what price I would have to pay.
No wonder it was impossible to decipher my love language.
I now look at the 5LL and realize my love language is an amalgamation of all those methods. If I had to rank one at the top, I would say quality time. As a latchkey only child, solo was my default mode, but I didn’t like being alone. It felt then, and still does now, like abandonment. It’s why I go for the chips when my husband travels, but it’s also why I float on clouds after a night out with my friends. I am still working on becoming fluent in my own love language, and until I am, I won’t be able to speak in someone else’s.
Do you know your own love language?
What I’m reading
Time to shift gears into a psychological thriller. I’m going away for a few days and want something light, but also twisty.
