Over the past few weeks, I've been slowly coming to terms with the fact that my Love Language is Physical Touch. Every time I've taken the tests, this is how I've scored.
Somewhere along the line, I got the impression that this love language was a Bad Thing™, so I didn't accept my results. I wrote in an earlier blog entry about my experiences with Words of Affirmation, but I was wrong in my assertion that it was my primary love language; it's my secondary love language. I even went through the effort of writing up my own test to determine your love language. The original version wasn't written well enough, and my results came out extremely one-sided. I modified the test to include very few options to force people to choose something other than their primary love language on some of the questions. I still came out very strongly as Physical Touch. Ironically, my low scores in Acts of Service and Receiving Gifts are backed up by my key difficulty in writing the test: I had a very difficult time coming up with multiple unique examples for these languages.
The implications of having this as my primary love language, though, are far more interesting. I have explicit memories of feeling extremely lonely during middle school and high school. My desire wasn't to have someone to talk with or to spend time with. My family and my best friend satisfied those every day. I didn't desire to be praised, as I got that from my math teachers, the county board of education, and of course my family.
What I remember is wishing I had someone to hold. I would imagine putting my arms around her while she rested her head on my chest. I've come to realize that this is probably a large part of why I've never been satisfied with being single. The whole concept of being happy with being single just seems foreign to me. How can I be happy if I have no one to hold hands with, no one to hug every day, no one to snuggle with on the sofa during a movie? Ultimately, it boils down to this: how can I be happy if I don't feel loved?
It also seems rather telling that most of my best memories of various past relationships involve some sort of physical touch:
• Learning to ballroom dance... and the Tango was my favorite.
• Long walks along the beach at night, holding hands
• Holding her hand beneath mine on the car's gear shift while I'm driving
• Playing with her hair--again while I'm driving... actually, just about any time...
• Giving back rubs
• My mom's scalp massages
• Snuggling under the covers in the middle of nowhere watching a meteor shower
• Giving my best friend a big hug when we meet (he lives twelve time zones away--we don't see each other often)
• Every first kiss over more than the past decade
• The big bear hugs I give people
• Two honeymoons, though technically, the one I had to get drunk wasn't really the best of memories
• My bird falling asleep while I'm holding him
• "Sitting in a broken circle while you rest upon my knee... this purrrrrrrfect moment will soon be leaving me"
To me, physical touch of any kind is very intimate. I can tell a lot about a person and our relationship by the hug. Likewise, the sex is even more revealing. The lesbian acted like it was a chore... unless it involved lesbian fantasies. The cheater always felt less valuable as a female. I believe the one I didn't marry taught me more about myself, though--that I love giving pleasure. This makes sense, since I had the hardest time properly pleasing the other two. The first, since I wasn't female, and the second because she faked orgasms for a long time. While the second was best at physically pleasuring me (ironically the least experienced with other guys), the third was the most fun--because I had no difficulty at all in pleasuring her. She even said I was the best she'd ever had. Unfortunately, it was also difficult because I knew I didn't love her. How could I continue to express so much love when it's not there? Sex without love feels like a lie every single time. I suspect I'll be celibate for a while.
But how can I be happy if I don't feel loved?
