Have you ever felt like you needed love so badly, but couldn’t explain why you didn’t feel it? I’ve spent the majority of my life searching for love. When I was in middle school I was the fat, funny friend. At least in my own head. I was the go-between for my skinny friends and their latest love interest. I was very interested in boys, but never felt they were interested in me.

Fast forward about 10 years. I’m engaged and heading to required pre-marital counseling with my wonderful fiancé. In the weekend intensive we learned a lot about each other, but most of it was pretty boiler plate – how many kids do you want, do you love Jesus, what was your family like growing up? We already knew those things about each other. What I didn’t know yet was his love language. In all honesty I didn’t know mine either.

Being a teen in the 90’s meant I was obsessed with magazine quizzes. I still am to this day – I’m a Hufflepuff, my Disney princess is Merida and my perfect summer vacation spot is Mykonos (thanks, Buzzfeed). When they told us that we needed to take a Love Languages quiz I was all for it, obviously. The problem was, all of the answers were the correct answer. I wanted to be shown love in all.the.ways! I clearly couldn’t tell my sweet, caring hubby-to-be that I was that needy. So I chose the top ways that he already showed me love and went with those. Tip: this is not the way to find your love language.

Fast forward again to 2020. The world is exploding and everyone is indoors. Together. All up in each other’s business. When your husband has been working outside of the home for 40+ hours a week for years, having him home 24/7 is shocking to the system. We had to get real on many issues going on in our home and our relationship. Fast. I won’t lie, it was rough for awhile.

When we finally talked about our love languages we realized that we had not been speaking the same language. My 38 years on Earth had shown me that words of affirmation are extremely important to me, especially in written form. But I had never told him this! Nor was I dropping major hints about it. I was keeping it to myself and it was slowly turning my once ‘open to love’ heart into a shriveled love raisin.

I knew his top love language was physical touch. It’s my bottom language, so that combined with the love raisin of a heart made it very hard for me to communicate love to him this way. After a lot of talking, some boundary setting, and self-work we are both speaking each others’ love language more frequently. My love raisin has plumped back up to a full-blown love grape (this analogy might have gotten away from me) and things are so much better now!