The Five Love Languages, and why I’m grateful for cats

This is my post for the April 2019 Carnival of Aces. The topic is The Five Love Languages.

This is an interesting topic! It’s something I’ve researched a bit before, and taken some online quizzes, but… the quizzes tend to be very romantic-relationship-biased, which is really disappointing.

My main love languages are: quality time and physical touch.

I would have the ones that are the most complicated for an aro ace person, wouldn’t I? Go figure. Thank goodness cats exist!

Quality Time

I love spending quality time with people close to me one on one. This doesn’t often happen with most friends, because they are usually busy and tend to prioritize work and family stuff. I also love spending time with people and just sitting quietly with them. We don’t have to talk, or interact, we’re just together, doing our own thing. Sometimes we can talk, but it’s not necessary. Those are the kind of interactions I like the most. There’s a lot of communication that just doesn’t work with words, and sitting quietly with someone means that you’re both comfortable enough with each other to not feel like silence is awkward.

I get to spend plenty of quality time like this with cats, who are happy to just sit on me or near me and just chill and keep me company.

Physical Touch

I love certain kinds of physical touch, with certain people, in certain situations. I especially like hugs and cuddling. I do get lots of hugs, but cuddling not so much. It’s also kind of weird to ask for, so I haven’t really asked anyone. So my cuddling is currently mostly limited to cats, which is also great. I love having a purring cat on my lap. I do sometimes cuddle one of my human friends too, but that often devolves into a wrestling match, so I’m not sure it really counts. Not that wrestling isn’t fun sometimes too, but it also isn’t really cuddling…

I used to feel a bit touch starved years ago, but actually my martial arts classes have helped a lot with that. Lots of grabbing and throwing each other, etc. The training also helped me with my touch repulsion, which is also a thing I have issues with. I used to really, really dislike physical touch from most people. It scared me. I’m not sure why exactly, but I was like that for a long time. I’m complicated, lol. Nowadays I’m ok with hugs from random people, even strangers.

I don’t like that some people use kissing as a greeting, even on the cheek or whatever. Humans put all sorts of weird things in their mouths, which I’d rather not get on me. Technically so do cats, but for some reason I don’t mind them licking me. I’m just full of contradictions, aren’t I?

Gifts

I like gifts in general. I get reminded of the person who gave me the thing whenever I see the thing, or use it, and that’s pretty cool. I also like having that effect on others.

But I also have some issues with gifts. I very rarely think to get people things, and I hate the expectation of having to get someone something when it’s their birthday, or Christmas, or whatever. I also don’t like opening gifts people give me in front of them, because I’m always very self-conscious about my reaction. I’m supposed to be thankful, right? What if they give me one of those generic “packs” of womanly products including skin lotion and all sorts of other disgusting things I can’t even look at without feeling queasy? … that happened once. I didn’t act very thankful at all.

Summary: gifts are great as long as they’re from people who know me well enough to not give me something I won’t like.

Cat gifts are not usually the kind I like, though… dead animals and puke aren’t very nice.

Words of Affirmation

I love compliments when it proves that someone has understood something about me that matters to me a lot. I don’t like ‘fake’ compliments that are basically people trying to convince me I’m something I’m not.

So basically, compliments need to make sense. I’ve had friends call me ‘sexy’… that does not really make sense, nor does it apply to me. But sensible things, like ‘smart’, or ‘funny’, or ‘quirky’ or even ‘weird’, those are sensible compliments. I actually take weird as a compliment… I’m weird like that.

I like to compliment people I care about, but I don’t see it as complimenting them… I’m merely pointing out something which I think is true and awesome.

I compliment my cats all the time, though they obviously don’t use human words to compliment me, they do so in other ways, like excitedly coming to greet me when I get home. Sometimes. When they’re not too busy ignoring me.

Acts of Service

I don’t really like it when people do things for me, and I’m terrible at accepting help. I have some issues with being anything but completely independent, and don’t like to think that I need people for any reason at all (this is a bit of a problem, sometimes).

This may be because my parents absolutely love doing things for me, and always have. All sorts of things, including things that didn’t need to be done at all. I know it makes them feel good to do things for me, so I kind of allow it, but I’m not really comfortable with it.

On the giving side, I only want to do things for people if they want me to, and it’s kinda hard to tell when that is. Some people will ask, great… but sometimes they ask too much, and they ask for things they really absolutely could do for themselves, so that makes me not want to… it’s complicated.

I don’t mind doing things for cats though, I’ll gladly feed them and make sure they’re as healthy as possible, and they’ll happily do all sorts of random weird nonsensical shit to make my life more interesting and make me laugh a lot.

Summary: cats are awesome, humans are complicated. But some humans are awesome too. Actually so are dogs, and other animals in general. It’s just that cats can climb over the neighbouring walls and fences and move in with me instead of their original humans, while most other pets can’t just leave and go live somewhere else. I didn’t actually choose to have cats – they chose to have me. I’m glad they did, and after being in denial for a few years (I don’t have any cats! These are the neighbour’s cats, I don’t know why they keep coming here!)… I have finally accepted that I’m a cat person.