[Re]Learning the Language of Love
A friend sent me a text this morning after a difficult conversation with someone she had given her heart over to. Her heart was not being handled the way she had hoped and so she grew more restless, defensive, and hurt during the relationship. Is this love? she has asked too many times.
A friend gave me the Five Love Languages for Children where I read that Tin’s love language is in physical touch. It’s how I learned to hold him even while he kicks and screams that he doesn’t want me to, because to feel his body yield to my touch after the dramatic protests is a love victory for both of us.
Last night, another friend called out of the blue to say that she had read what I had written to Sty and she wanted to tell me that she thought it was right on and straight from the heart. It gave me great satisfaction to know that I’m learning to speak my heart’s language, something that I have battled with in the years, relationships and marriages. I battled not because I had an opponent, but because I didn’t truly know what my heart wanted to say.
Do I really want a life of learning and travel and be with a person who doesn’t? Do I really want a child if it means in having one I lose my partner? Am I entitled to demand truth when the very essence of honesty often times eludes me? Is it wrong to ask for monogamy and honesty when I have lied and cheated in the past?
Again I say, we are all traveling around this spiral of life, some of us are trying to get to the next rung and it can be difficult and challenging. I read an article that Ta’Nehisi Coates wrote about learning to speak French and feeling high when he reached a new level in his study even while he realized that he would never master it. It is the same with the language of love, all of the elements are in flux and yet we want certainty.
Only the open heart stays constant. To coax out the language of love takes practice. There are stumbling blocks, and there are triumphant Rocky running up the stairs moments.
