The Sixth "Love Language"?

I mean, who hasn't read the Love Languages book? And maybe it's useful to people who have never thought the idea, "my spouse experiences the world differently than I do." Except instead of 16 options, there's five. And instead of taking a test, you're supposed to intuitively know which of the five awesome things you like best. As if any normal person in the world doesn't like sex. Pfff.

There's this studio c sketch about how Santa Claus decides to give all the kids gifts based on their love languages. So only one of them actually gets gifts, while the others get Santa's hand in their face (physical touch), their toys given away to charity (acts of service), etc. In the morning I'll embed it in this post.

My brother: "Well, that sketch funny because they get the languages completely wrong."

Me: "No, it's funny because it's making fun of the entire idea that people like to be appreciated only one way; every single person likes getting gifts."

I recently discovered my "love language" (even the term makes me somewhat vomit in my mouth: the alliteration, admitting this loaded word into non-spousal relationship contexts, oozing sentimentality and disgusting piles of subjective feelings) and it's something completely different from quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, or physical touch (omgosh seriously, how did this shrink fail to think about sex. "Hey honey, wanna fulfil our primary evolutionary function?" said no person in a serious way ever).

It's interest.

Me: "Hey, I discovered this course about Beethoven's sonatas and it's really interesting! What do you think about it?"

My uncle: "Yeah, I recently started listening to [some other works] by Beethoven. Really, I think there's nothing the man produced which is not of interest."

Later
Me: [daydreaming aloud] "But seriously, doesn't that sound like the most magnificent compliment one could ever receive? Wouldn't it be amazing if someone said those words about you?"

Danny: "I think for those words to objectively be true one would have to produce very little."

Ha. HA!

To summarize a conversation that pierced me to my core:

Me: "whine whine whine I feel like very few people out there care about my thoughts."

My friend: "I think there's lots of people who care about your thoughts. Anyway, what's the signal that people [online] give you that they care?"

i.e. what's your love language. Excuse me while I vomit my displeasure at realizing this.

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Okay, back.

Me: "I have no idea what the signal is that people online care about my thoughts, but I definitely know that they DON'T care when they ghost me or just don't read what I've said at all."

Ghosting is when you contact someone online, you know they received what you wrote, and they don't respond. They ignore you on purpose even when you specifically are trying to communicate with them.

Scrolling past my writing because it's not interesting is also ignoring me on purpose but it's less aggregious; you can't be interesting to everybody at all times. Even if you're Beethoven.

But like, what the heck. I carefully pour my most important thoughts - my genuine testimony! - out of my mind, sacrificing nearly all that days alloted precious, limited free time - and I get a response from...4 or 5 people? I had low expectations but apparently they weren't low enough. In five seconds I can reshare a pretty postcard photo from the place where I grew up or write down one of the millions of snarky thoughts that pass through my mind and generate more interest in a matter of hours. That's...

Well, that's sad.

Interest doesn't fit neatly into any of these dumb five categories. It's pretty much some combination of all of them.

It's really difficult to guage interest online. You get these weird signals that are oddly specific (did they open this document and leave tracks in it? Did they like or comment? Can I see them writing something and then going back and erasing it and rewriting it? If I'm feeling extremely creepy - haven't done this one for a few years but I used to regularly and even labeled them in my blog stats tracker - did someone at their IP address open my blog?). You don't have any of the fundamentally human visual signals that are so impossible to name: a tiny microglance to the side, a slight wrinkle of the nose, a goofy laugh or involuntary grin. I can't see those but I'm $&#@ good at imagining them. Or am I.

If you want to know your love language, the best way to figure it out is not to ponder over it for days and days. It's simply to ask yourself, "how do people you love piss you off the most?" The opposite is your love language. Or maybe, "how do you like to show people you care about them?" That's probably your love language, too.

I really, really like to show love by being interested. It's what I enjoy doing most. I don't even think of it in those terms because it is the way I naturally am. It is infinitely fun to watch people react, especially when they are provoked into laughing or smiling. I love this. And I enjoy doing it in all the five "official" ways, except that physical touch is in this roped-off strictly family-only area.

My greatest worry is that I'm not actually that interesting.

Going off of social media for a while is inevitably going to give you these powerful messages: "People don't care about your online thoughts even close to as much as you hope they do."

"You're never going to be able to get everyone you know to care."

"You're the only one obsessing over yourself. Get over yourself and get out in the real world."

"You can show a lot more interest in others by a simple phone call or text than by a like or a comment."

And mainly: "LACK OF A SIGNAL ISN'T ALWAYS A SIGN OF DISINTEREST." There could be a hundred really good reasons somebody doesn't respond, so base your self worth off something real, something more concrete and lasting, like the promise that is repeated on every page of the scriptures by every prophet since the dawn of time: God cares about you.