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What love language best describes you?

Words by Lillianna DiFini

Valentine’s Day is a special day dedicated to proving to your loved ones just how much they mean to you. Oftentimes, love and value on Valentine’s Day is demonstrated through decorative cards, special gifts, bouquets of flowers and, most importantly, overpriced chocolate.

Regardless of your opinion on this particular holiday, there are certain aspects relating to love that many individuals tend to never think about. Due to different personality traits as well as personality characteristics, each individual tends to show and receive love in one of five different ways: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time and physical touch.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we are going to discuss these five different types of love languages. Furthermore, I included an online quiz where I will explain my own love language according to my results.

The first type of love language, words of affirmation, describes individuals who value verbal compliments. No matter how meaningful these compliments may be, this type of love language reaffirms their value based off of other’s words. 

The second love language, acts of service, relates to any individual who believes in the phrase “actions speak louder than words.” This love language describes individuals who value those actions and go out of their way to complete acts that are meaningful to their significant other, whether this be cooking their favorite meal or simply opening a door for them. 

Receiving gifts is a particularly self-explanatory love language. Those who relate to this language adore receiving tangible items that make them feel appreciated. 

Quality time, the fourth love language, means that an individual most highly values one-on-one attention between them and their partner. People who identify with this love language desire complete and total attention from their significant other while spending meaningful time together. 

The last love language, physical touch, is also rather self-identifiable. Individuals who identify with this love language feel the most adored and appreciated through physical contact. 

Now that each love language is covered, I decided to delve deeper into my own research and determine what love language I best identify with. With the particular quiz I included, you can best determine your love language by setting the quiz to what relationship and age status best defines you. After a short initial setup, your quiz will be underway! 

My personal results listed the five different love languages in order of what most applies to me based on my responses to the quiz. Quality time was the love language that applied the most to me. Following this love language in order were words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts and physical touch. 

Understanding your own personal love language will help you better assess the ways in which you feel the most valued and appreciated. Furthermore, understanding each of the five different love languages will help you better interpret the needs of your loved ones as well as the best methods of making them feel the most loved and appreciated. I encourage readers to take the quiz listed below and to elaborate on your results with family and friends!

Take the quiz here:

5 Love Language Profiles

Information source: 

Love, Crated with. “The 5 Love Languages® And What They Mean.” Crated With Love, 25 Oct. 2019, cratedwithlove.com/blog/five-love-languages-and-what-they-mean/

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Giving up

Words by Kathryn Monsewicz 

Have you ever wanted to give up on something? Be it the first time your toddler toes touched the water and you were scared to swim, or you’ve listened to your professor ramble on enough you don’t think the notes are worth it anymore. Maybe you gave up on your boyfriend of six months because things didn’t “click” anymore, or you consider that promotion at work to be way out of your league.

I’ve given up before. Whether it was ballet class, karate, baton twirling, playing the piano, playing the violin, trying to score higher than a B in geometry class; bottom line, it is human to want to give up when things get tough or when you don’t “feel” it anymore. That’s what I was told, at least.

“If you don’t feel it, don’t do it,” Brian says. Brian is a local musician who comes into the grocery store I work at every day to buy cheap cans of Honey Brown booze and occasionally some discount, $4.99 cigarettes. He’s 51 years old, has been playing music since age 16, writes the music and leads the guitar for his band and refuses to play anything other than his own pieces.

I’ve never before been told to give up, that it was okay if you didn’t think you were able to accomplish something because you could just give up. But there’s a second meaning to what Brian says. Sure, if something doesn’t settle right with your abilities, then giving up is an option. But giving up so you can foster the skills in what you’re truly good at is not quite giving up.

Rewind to my first week in microeconomics class: opportunity costs, when you give up one opportunity for another.

This opportunity cost to Brian, his playing only original work instead of practicing the pieces of the music masters before him, was his decision. He abandoned his music theory class in school, snatched up a recording contract, but seems to be stuck shoveling snow in the winter and buying cheap booze and stale cigarettes every day of the week.

He believes that if you don’t feel it in your gut, if you don’t love and cherish the work you are doing, then give up on it and make room for what you do love. Sure, he shovels snow or mows lawns as a season-specified job, but that is not his career. Music is his career as much as writing is mine. My job is customer service at a grocery store, but my career is built by the keyboard keys I’m tap-tap-tapping on right now.

Imagine for a minute the life you want for yourself. What future are you thinking about? Are you in love with your spouse, your family, your career? Do all these things make you feel happy? They should. And if they don’t, there’s a sign that maybe somewhere along the way you should have given up. You should have given up the idea for the ideal.

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Thanksgiving Soul Food: What it means to be thankful

Managing editor Heather Inglis defines a word and brings herself to tears in the process of writing it down.

Words by Heather Inglis

My mother and I circa Christmas 2012.

My mom often tells me I’m ungrateful.

No matter what’s going on in my spastic life, I always tend to focus on my bad luck. Yes, I know I shouldn’t do that. It’s not until I’m in the middle of a full-blown panic attack that my mother hears my outrage, and her response is always the same:

“Did you wake up today? Do you have a roof over your head? Are you getting an education? Yes? OK, well, I think you’re doing just fine. Be grateful.”

“But my personal gains are shit, mother!” I think as I physically feel my mental stability caving in around me. I’m 21 years old, on the verge of graduation with no concrete plans for my immediate future, embarrassingly single and, most days, a little down and out. Fighting unhappiness comes naturally to me at this point in my short life.

And it’s not just me, either. I notice thought processes like this with others around me. Some millennials like the idea of instant gratification. In other words, everything needs to happen for us right this second, and if our goals don’t pan out a certain way, we think the world is ending. Don’t believe me? Check with Bucknell University.

So, what do we do with this mindset around Thanksgiving? No, we don’t stuff the turkey with it because this holiday is more than just food, parades and football. This is the one holiday that everyone supposed to think about what they’re thankful to have in their lives. Yes, even those of us who think we have it rough are supposed to be thankful for something.

With graduation a short time away, I’ve been thinking more about the big picture of my life. In hindsight, I have a lot of things going for me despite what I’m dying to achieve. On that note, maybe my mother is once again using the wrong terminology to describe things. I shouldn’t be grateful for all these, if you will, inherent things—I should be thankful.

Being thankful is more than just verbally expressing how much something impacts you or your life; it’s feeling that gratitude in your heart. It’s feeling an overwhelming joy for that impact through every nerve. It’s realizing how great life is and coming damn close to tears because of that fact.

I’m so thankful for my life that it probably should be embarrassing. I’m lucky enough to have the best, most supportive parents in the entire world. We might not always agree, but I’d be nothing without them, literally and figuratively. I’m also surrounded by many amazing friends who have stuck by my side through my highest and lowest times. I’ve experienced over-the-moon love and the worst heartbreaks imaginable, not to mention excitement, surprise and that feeling of butterflies when meeting someone special. I have a warm bed to go home to, easy access to food and water and live in a free land.

As if I didn’t have enough to be thankful for, I’m very thankful to be me. I live a life some people dream of and have quirks and talents no one can ever take away from me no matter what. For that I am especially thankful.

So take this Thanksgiving to look past the seemingly “bad hand” life has dealt and think about how amazing life actually is. Embrace that gratitude with your heart and soul, and be utterly thankful. A wise young girl named Marcie once said her good friend Charlie Brown, “Thanksgiving is more than eating, Chuck. You heard what Linus was saying out there. Those early Pilgrims were thankful for what had happened to them, and we should be thankful, too. We should just be thankful for being together. I think that’s what they mean by ‘Thanksgiving,’ Charlie Brown.”

So, what are you thankful for?