Love Me: No, Not Like That

“Here’s your coffee, Babe.” My husband, Alex, smiles as he hands over the steaming mug of delicious, magic go-juice.

I grip it with both hands, warmed from the inside out. It’s not just that coffee is pretty much my favorite drink in the whole world, or even that he prepared it exactly the way I like it—tiny splash of creamer and a little milk. It’s that I was up and down all night with the kids, changing diapers, soothing nightmares, and explaining to my son for the eightieth time that he does not need M&Ms at three in the morning. By the time my alarm went off, I was bleary-eyed and only half coherent.

The simple act of him making my morning coffee—especially after a rough night—and delivering it to me on the couch before he leaves for work never fails to make my heart hum with love and appreciation. It seems like such a small thing, and maybe it is to some people, but this little action done to make my morning just a bit easier is pretty big to me.

And it doesn’t matter what the act is, or how big or small it may seem. I get that same warm glow inside when Alex cleans up from dinner, offers to change that particularly foul-smelling diaper even though he did the last one that resulted in open windows, or drives across town to change my tire after I blew it out hitting a curb—not my finest moment to be sure.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it when he brings me chocolates or my favorite flowers, or arranges a romantic surprise. In fact, I will never forget my birthday the year we were engaged. Alex was away training for the military and I was still in NY finishing my degree. As you would expect, I was understandably disappointed I wasn’t going to get to spend my birthday with the man I was going to marry. Knowing how down I was about it, my incredible best friend, Sarah, offered to take me out for dinner to celebrate.

Despite some lingering sadness, I was enjoying my time with my BFF. We were waiting on our drinks to arrive when our server came over to our table and handed me a white rose—one of my favorite flowers. She said it was from some guy at the bar. Epically confused, and not doing a very good job of hiding it, I turned where our waitress was pointing and my heart leapt. There, standing beside the bar with a full bouquet of white roses was Alex.

It turned out that my wonderful, and incredibly sneaky, best friend teamed up with my fiancé to surprise me. And surprise me they did. I almost face planted on the floor in my hurry to get to Alex and cling to him like Velcro for however long I had with him.

It’s one of my favorite memories.

But, I don’t need all the grand gestures to feel loved.

Several years ago now, my sister sent me a link to take the quiz to find out your love language. I hadn’t heard a lot about it at that point, but thought it could be fun to see what it would say about me. I diligently answered all of the questions as honestly as I could, and I was shocked at just how spot on the results were.

The test determined that my number one love language was Acts of Service. Basically, any task or activity that would make life easier or more enjoyable for someone else. My husband making and bringing me my coffee for example.

The results weren’t surprising to me, or anyone who really knows me. The best way to show me you love me is to help take some of the pressure off my shoulders. Any small thing to make my day go a little smoother or feel a little brighter never fails to give me that happy glow.

Part of it, I think, is that Acts of Service is the main way my Dad shows love. While he’s never been shy about telling me he loves me, he’s just never been into the verbal mush like some people. What he has always been great at is showing the people he loves that he cares. It’s in the way he always used to check my car to make sure it was okay before I would drive back to college or the way he would help walk me through the hell-scape that was filling out FAFSA every year. He is forever doing these little things to make my life a little easier and a little safer.

Growing up experiencing that kind of love I think helped to shape my perception of what love should look like. And, as someone who struggles with anxiety and managing life in general thanks to ADHD, I live in a near constant state of agitation, often drowning under the pressure of expectations—largely those I place on myself. So, when someone takes the time out of their day to make mine a little brighter and a little easier, I can’t help but feel loved.

Knowing how I feel when I receive love through Acts of Service—even before I knew that’s what it was called—often leads me to show others love in the same way. Taking care of people has always come natural to me. I hate seeing people I care for in distress, sick, or struggling. My instinctual reaction will always be to jump in and do something to make it better, whether that’s driving a friend where they need to go, cooking a meal, or helping someone move. I always look for ways I can be of service to those I love. To make their lives easier, and to show them I care.

But something that has taken me longer to realize—and even longer to internalize—is that not everyone receives love this way. Just because Acts of Service is the best way for someone to show me they care, doesn’t mean that is the best way to show someone else that I care.

Not surprisingly, this can sometimes cause tensions and hurt feelings in relationships. When someone isn’t receiving love in the way that feels most special and important to them, it’s easy to feel overlooked or even neglected. They’re called Love “Languages” for a reason, and it’s absolutely possible for two people to have a language barrier when it comes to expressing love.

My husband and I, for instance, have a love language barrier. While I bask in the glow of Acts of Service, Alex is all about Physical Touch. It would be easy to throw in a gender stereotypical sex joke here, but that would be doing the topic a disservice, I think. The love language of physical touch can include things like sex and sexual intimacy, but that’s not the whole, or even the main, story here. At its core, physical touch can help a person feel safe, promote bonding, and release oxytocin—the “feel good” hormone.

Everything from kissing to cuddling to simply holding hands falls under the umbrella of physical touch as a love language. And, surprisingly, it doesn’t always need to include touch. Funny, right? It’s about physicality overall. For someone whose love language is physical touch, body language is equally important and just as expressive as verbal language.

Alex had already signed a contract with the Army by the time we started seeing each other. Our first date was in February of that year, and he left for basic training in June. Four months. That’s all we had to decide if we were serious enough about each other to give the ever-dreaded long-distance thing a shot.

Over those months before he left, I assured him repeatedly that I thought we had something special and that I was willing to give it a try if he was. He, understandably, thought I was a bit crazy—in a good way, he assured me—but he was as in it as I was and we decided to go for it.

It certainly wasn’t easy, but we got through that first stretch of being long-distance successfully, and over the next eight years of our relationship, Alex’s military service meant that it wouldn’t be the last chunk of time we spent apart. Weeks or months, a state away or a world away—they were tough, but we found ways to connect and make the best of our circumstances. The times when we could only write letters to each other, however, were especially rough.

Thankfully these stretches apart weren’t all “letters only”—we were occasionally able to talk on the phone, and on rare occasions even FaceTime. Being able to actually see one another brought a sense of connection that is lacking in letters and phone calls. Knowing what I know how about Alex’s love language, it’s not really surprising how special and important these far too brief occasions were.

The facial expressions and the body language brought into the mix by being able to actually see each other brought us as close as we could be in the position we were in. I know I struggled being apart and looked at these chances to actually see his smile as a very much needed breath of air. But it’s in looking back with this new knowledge that I appreciate just how much harder the distance must have been for Alex in some ways.

Alex has been out of the Army for a few years now, and you would think that the increased physical proximity to one another would make the whole physical touch thing a whole lot easier. And, obviously, it does in a lot of ways. What we didn’t anticipate, however, was how having children would affect this particular love language.

Oh, there’s all the usual things we knew to expect. Kids running you ragged during the day and somehow always popping up at night at precisely the worst moment. (I swear, they have an internal timer that goes off whenever an intimate moment might be occurring). What we didn’t anticipate was being ‘touched out’.

It was a concept I had never heard of before having kids. But, then again, I had never been touched out before having kids. It was a novel experience, having another human being that attached to you.

Our first, Dean, was a very touch needy infant. He had horrid reflux and colic, and holding him was pretty much the only way to avoid the systematic torture of round the clock deafening cries. It wasn’t until he was about two that he started to become more independent and his aversion to being touched started to emerge. Now-a-days, he still rarely likes to be touched, but will occasionally instigate a hug or a brief cuddle.

My daughter, on the other hand…how do I put this delicately? If Madilyn could crawl inside of me and wear me like a skin suit all day every day, she would. Now, I’m not trying to call her clingy, but if I did, she would definitely be Stage Five.

I thought I was touched out at the end of the day when Dean was young. I swear, I had no idea I could be full on burned out from touch until we had Maddie.

This is the part of the post where I’d like to say that my love for my husband is the magical kind of fairy tale love where these sorts of problems are easily overcome. While I do believe my love for my husband is magical, unfortunately, it can’t just bippity-boppity-boo this particular problem away. The real world doesn’t work like that.

Here, in the real world where we live, I love my husband enough to want to work on this problem. At the end of the day, after having been cuddled, climbed on like a jungle gym, pawed at, and sat on, I still want to put in the effort to show my husband just how much he’s loved.

And it’s not just for him. While physical touch may not be my top love language, that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. Even when I’m at my most touched out, I still crave the intimacy and connection that physical touch brings. I will always want to be close with Alex in that way. Some days, it’s just a little harder for me to overcome that particular sensation of burn out.

I’m working on it though. Both on my own and in therapy, I’m putting in the work to learn how to set boundaries with my children and how to better regulate myself when I get overstimulated. It’s hard some days. In fact, it’s really hard some days. But, to me, it’s always worth it. My relationship with my husband is worth it.

There is a heavy sense of guilt that comes with this challenge, though. Seeing how easily Alex absorbed what my own love language was and how he seamlessly brings it into our relationship, it’s easy to beat myself up for struggling to love him so effortlessly. It sounds awful out loud, and probably even worse in my head, when I say that I struggle some days to love my husband the way he needs to be loved. What kind of wife does that make me, that I struggle to make my husband feel loved?

Not that Alex ever makes me feel like a bad wife or person for my struggles. I swear sometimes this man is too good to be true. He is never angry or hurtful, but he is careful to be honest about how it feels for him when I go through long stretches of touch burnout. I appreciate his honesty more than I think he knows. Sometimes it’s easy for me to get caught up in the daily chaos of things and let intimacy fall to the wayside without even thinking about it. Hearing how this affects him and knowing how important it is—to us both, really—helps to re-frame things for me and realign my priorities.

It’s not always simple being a couple with a love language barrier. It would probably be easy for some to assume it creates points of contention—something dividing us or pushing us apart. But, with Alex, we naturally see it not as me versus him, but as us versus the language barrier.

And, I think that’s kind of beautiful.