Love. The golden word for the month of February, am I right?

I think February is one of my favorite months because I love Valentine’s Day so insanely much! But I also love the emphasis on love this month brings.

You see, God designed each of us with the need to feel loved.

I absolutely LOVE the way Megan put it:

“You see the thing is, we humans need to know we are loved. We are extremely needy, every single one of us. We need affection and attention to survive. We were created that way. The desire for intimacy is in our DNA.”
(Source)

Being loved by someone is awesome. On the flip-side of the coin, showing love to others is equally as important.

One way we can show love to others is by speaking their love language.

The five love languages are words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch. Dr. Gary Chapman wrote about them in his book, The 5 Love Languages. 

If you don’t know what your top love language is and would like to find out, you can take a free quiz on his website to find out! :) (

In case you’re curious, I’m divergent when it comes to love; physical touch, words of affirmation, and quality time are all equally tied across the top for me.)

I absolutely love finding out what my friends’ love languages are. It really helps me see them in a new light.

For example, I found out a few months ago that my roommate’s top love languages are words of affirmation and quality time.

Throughout the semester, she had left me the sweetest notes now and then and those notes really meant a lot to me. Once I discovered that words of affirmation were how she expresses love, this made perfect sense to me! And now I know that a great way to show her I love her is to write her a note as well. :)

Today, we are talking about the five love languages and how we can use them to show our friends we love them.

Firstly, you need to ask your friend what her love language is. If she doesn’t know, point her to the quiz. You also may be able to naturally figure out her love language if y’all hang out a lot.

Secondly, as we go through this, think of ways you can take these ideas and pointers and use them to show your friend you love them :)

That being said, let’s dive on in:

Love languages get mentioned a lot in relation to romantic relationships. But what about friendships? Here's how you can speak your friend's love language.

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Words of Affirmation

There are two main forms of word of affirmation: written words and spoken words.

Personally, I prefer written words of affirmation. Don’t get me wrong- both written and spoken words of affirmation are nice- but written words are awesome because then I can look back on them if I’m having a bad day.

Spoken words of affirmation are great at the moment, but eventually, I forget what was said and need to hear it again, LOL! In the words of Tiffany Dawn, “Complements expire after 24 hours.”

So if your friend’s top love language is words of affirmation, here are some ideas:

  • Write her a note wishing her good luck before a major test, job interview, etc.
  • Write her a note telling her why she’s awesome.
  • Tell her you love her on a regular basis.
  • Write her an encouraging “Open on a bad day” letter.
  • Tell her you like her outfit/ hair/ that she looks pretty etc. (Make sure you mean it!)
  • Give her deep complements, like “I really admire how you respect your parents. It’s really inspiring!”

If you need to restock on stationary so you can write your friend notes, Amazon has some super cute options! (Click the image to be taken to its page on Amazon.)

 

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Acts of Service

Since acts of service isn’t one of my top love languages, I want to share what two of my blogging friends say about this love language.

Cassie says,

So acts of service is my top love language; I get that from my mom. This one is important to me because it often requires no money & just requires the person to be thinking of you enough to help you do something that may not necessarily be all that fun.

 

When someone helps me with a service, I feel super loved and appreciative that they took time out of their day to do something they don’t like doing to help me out.

 

Examples of this are running errands to pick things up for someone who is very busy and in a time crunch, helping them to clean before room checks, helping out with little housekeeping or cooking chores when they aren’t feeling well (or bringing them soup), driving them to the doctor or offering to help them with DIY crafts or projects!

 

Any helping hand offered in many situations count as acts of service that can really make someone’s day- especially if that’s their love language. The little things warm our hearts!

Kiley shares what not to do:

As a person who’s love language is acts of service I greatly appreciate seeing simple effort in a relationship. If I notice that the other person can’t even help me clean up or do something simple, then that’s a problem for me as I am only one person and I expect to see effort in any relationship. 

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Receiving Gifts

Receiving gifts is another love language I’m not strong in. So, I’ve turned to some of my blogger friends for help explaining this. (Click their name to visit their blog.)

Here’s what Megan has to say about this love language:

Gift givers show love by showering you with tokens of their affection. We leave little notes in your lunchbox. We make you origami swans (not me though because I have no paper-folding abilities whatsoever.) We buy you cheese in the shape of hearts. Basically we leave a tangible trace of our adoration.

(Source)

This is what Dianne says:

Receiving gifts is one of my husband’s highest and my lowest. I asked him what that meant because I’m so bad at it.

 

He basically told me “receiving gifts” can be something as simple as a hand-written letter or note, a card or something that reminds me of him (i.e, if I’m shopping and I think something is either so him or something he would like, I buy it and leave at his desk). It can be their favorite chocolate or a game they’ve been dying to get or advice, etc.

Lily has a great example of what this looks like in regards to friendship:

So for my best friend, she loves seeing people blessed by gifts. She planned my entire bachelorette weekend and then was so excited about it that she ended up coming down to see me months early to have a “pre bachelorette” party.

 

I think I’ve paid for a meal with her maybe twice. She insists. For her, she works hard to make a living that enables her to bless her friends and family (she’s an ER nurse) and she wants to be able to use that work to make someone’s day.

 

Sometimes it is SO HARD to accept her gifts because she’s seriously so generous. But then I get to love on her in my unique ways and she feels blessed by that.

 

We have to accept sometimes that monetary value can’t be compared to thoughtfulness. So accepting generosity but being willing to love them back in a different way is just as good as giving them something of equal “value” in return.

If your friend’s top love language is receiving gifts, think of ways that you can shower them with small examples of affection.

 

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Quality Time

If this is your friend’s top love language, then actually hanging out with you is very important to her. If y’all make plans and then you have to cancel them for some reason, she might take it personally. So try to reschedule ASAP in this case so that she will know she still matters to you.

Additionally, if she’s the only one who’s setting up times for y’all to hang out, eventually she might start to wonder if you really do want to spend time with her. So an easy way to show her you love her is to text her to ask if she wants to hang out. Don’t let her do all of the planning in the friendship

Here are some ways to love your quality time friend:

  • Text her to see if she wants to get coffee/ food sometime soon.
  • Don’t cancel hang outs unless you absolutely must, and reschedule immediately if you do cancel.
  • When you are hanging out, keep your phone away. Stay focused on your friend and whatever y’all are doing.
  • Suggest things to do so y’all can hang out- don’t just let her be the one to plan things.
  • Keep eye contact while she’s speaking.
  • Listen to her.
  • Tell her that you enjoy spending time with her.

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Physical Touch

If this is your friend’s top love language, but it is one of your lowest, this may be hard for you. When it comes to physical touch, I think there are three kinds of people: those who LOVE it, those who hate it, and those who don’t care one way or the other.

Here are some ways to love your physical touch friend:

  • Give her “hello/goodbye” hugs each time you see her.
  • Sit close to her.
  • If you’re not a physical touch person, let her hug you ;) This will mean a lot, especially if she knows you’re not a touchy person.

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Showing our friends we love them is very important.

And what better time to go out of our way to show/tell someone we love them than around Valentine’s Day? :)


I want to know: What are your top love languages? How do you like to receive love?


Let’s be Instagram friends! @kara_beth17

4 thoughts on “Love Languages: Best Friends Edition

  1. Rebekah Joy | More Radiance

    This is a great post! I love learning about the love languages, but I never thought to really apply it to my friends. My personal love language is quality time, but words of affirmation if high up there too! I’m looking forward to applying this to some of my friendships now too – I just need to figure out what their languages are now :)
    Rebekah Joy

    1. Kara Beth Post author

      Ah, we’re almost the same! :) :) That’s awesome :)

      Have fun applying this to your friendships! :) I find it so fun to talk about with my friends.

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