“The Five Love Languages” – the April 2019 Carnival of Aces Call for Submissions

The “Carnival of Aces” is a blogging carnival where each month people are invited to write about a specific topic that is related to asexuality/the ace spectrum in some way. Or creators can participate in other formats including video, poetry, art etc.

Check out the masterpost for more info:

https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/a-carnival-of-aces-masterpost/

It’s now April 2019, and it is the sixth time that I am hosting the carnival. Before, I hosted select months in 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018. You can find those in the masterpost.

I was surprised to realize that not that much has been written explicitly on asexuality and this concept of “The Five Love Languages”. Wikipedia explains more but the basic takeway is that most people have a way they communicate love and not all humans have the same way. People can feel like someone they care about isn’t ever expressing their love if the two people in that dynamic have mismatched love languages.

The five are:

• receiving (and giving) gifts
• quality time
• words of affirmation
• acts of service
• physical touch

Sometimes the topic is discussed in heteronormative and/or amatonornative ways, and personally I haven’t read the book to see how bad that is in that regard although I’ve heard it’s pretty bad and the “official” quiz for couples is apparently pretty awful in that regard as well.

However, I’ve been in spaces where these languages have been discussed in a way where they can be more broadly applied. If you want to talk about romantic partners here, sure, go for it.

But also I’m hoping to see you all discuss friendships, family, mentor/mentee bonds, and any other dynamic where one is expressing that they appreciate a person, that they care about the other, that they’re important to the other, etc. (Regardless of if the word “love” feels correct to you.)

If you don’t think the 5 love languages are a good model for certain reasons, feel free to explain that to me. You think they’re annoying or wrong or missing key ways people communicate love? Great! I’m interested in opinions of that variety as well.

But also just anything periphery to them that me suggesting this topic made you think of; if you’re not sure it’s related; just. Submit your post anyway. I want to read all the perspectives! Even unusual ones.

There was a popular thread in 2014 on AVEN about the five love languages:

https://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/109818-five-love-languages/

But actually it came up a bunch of different times in AVEN’s history. There was this thread in 2011, a poll in 2013, a 2016 discussion of not having love languages and if it means you’re aromantic, another poll almost exactly one year ago in 2018… It keeps coming up on AVEN. But I haven’t been hanging out on AVEN at all for years and so I haven’t actually seen it discussed till I was Googling today.

This blog post on the topic of the five love languages mentioned asexuality in passing:

Physical Touch is understood as things like holding hands, cuddling, etc. I’ve seen it both include and not include sex which, I think, is a great opportunity to expand the understanding of Physical Touch to include folks who are not interested in sex for any number of reasons (asexuality, low desire, trauma, illness, medications, body dysmorphia, gender dysphoria, hormonal shifts, etc). Some things to be mindful of for those whose primary love language is physical touch are the cultural expectations we have around physical intimacy, especially sexual intimacy, and how it may be difficult for people to verbalize if physical touch is either low on their list of priorities or downright unwelcome.

There was a Reddit thread at the end of 2017 that discussed the topic of asexuality and the five love languages.

Even this Quora answer about how to write an asexual character expressing their romantic love suggested looking into the five love languages.

I took the quiz in December and felt my answers might be different depending on my exact relationships at any given point in my life, perhaps. These were my personal results, after I took the quiz “for singles”:

An image showing a screenshot of the email I received December 4, 2018 from 5lovelanguages.com with my results, my “Love Language Personal Profile”. I got a 9 for a Words of Affirmation, 8 for Quality Time, 7 for Receiving Gifts, 4 for Acts of Service, and 2 for Physical Touch .

You don’t have to take the quiz to play the game and decide which love languages do or don’t make sense to you, and why or why not. In fact, after I took the quiz, I realized “Gifts” might be more of a love language for me than anything and yet it’s not my #1 listed here. So like. This stuff obviously isn’t an exact science. It’s just… Interesting food for thought.

If you want to take the quiz you can do so here:

https://www.5lovelanguages.com

Let me know in the comments (or by email, etc) if you have any questions or concerns.

To submit your entry, either leave a comment below or send an email to me at luvtheheaven5@gmail.com . The deadline is the end of the day Tuesday, April 30th! If you would like to post anonymously, I can copy and paste text from an email into a Guest post on this blog of mine, just let me know that this is your wish. You can also contact me via my tumblr, which is luvtheheaven.tumblr.com – links don’t send in “Asks” though, so I’ll never get your post if you try to send a link that way. I do receive submissions and messages but in my opinion, email is easier, and comments here are easiest.

Thanks!

• Asexuality
• carnival of aces