Please remove
Physical touch is big for me, but I often can get overstimulated and need to NOT be touched, so quality time leaves space for both to happen or not and it's the time spent close even if you don't interact at all that helps make the presence of someone more familiar.
I saw an adorable YouTube video recently where a family had a bell and a sign “Ring the Bell if you need a Hug.” And then the video was all the hugging that happened in the family. When mom or dad couldn’t be there the siblings filled in for one another and I think they even had the cat ringing the bell and giving and receiving hugs. Cutest thing ever.
(Edit for clarity: I'm using the general "you" throughout. If I were speaking directly to OP, I'd have tagged them.)
If diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and consent are important to you, I urge you to stop using the 5 Love Languages model to describe your social-emotional needs.
Whenever this topic comes up, I encourage people to move away from Gary Chapman's system - for good reason:
If you want to read more about why Chapman and his system are a problem:
https://ellenforster.substack.com/p/debunking-the-five-love-languages
https://readingwithk.substack.com/p/bigotry-religion-and-profit-the-not
https://emotionalabusecoach.com/5-problems-with-applying-the-5-love-languages-in-abusive-relationships/
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/is_there_science_behind_the_five_love_languages
https://www.livescience.com/health/relationships/you-cannot-put-people-into-arbitrary-boxes-psychologists-critique-the-5-love-languages
If you genuinely find the concept of "love languages" useful for self-reflection or communicating needs, I recommend the 18 Modern Love Languages by Anne Hodder-Shipp instead. It was explicitly developed to address the many gaps in Chapman's system and to be inclusive of all relationship styles, including platonic.
Even better: rather than relying on easy archetype systems that only scratch the surface, focus on actually communicating your needs, boundaries, and strengths & weaknesses directly. The 5 Love Languages have become a pop pseudo-psychology crutch - a shortcut that keeps people from developing more advanced relationship and communication skills.
(Edited for formatting)
@jmcalpine what I shared wasn't an attack on you, and your post didn't rub me the wrong way at all. But as I said in my comment, there are a lot of issues with the 5 love languages model and most people are unaware of those issues because their only knowledge of the concept of love languages comes from social media.
Critique of a system isn't a critique of the person who mentioned it - I know that can be hard to feel in the moment, but that truly wasn't my intent.
@cuddlefaery I don't think you said anything wrong. I didn't know of the updated book so I liked the info.
@JasonCuddles I keep running into this issue on the forums where the general plural use of "you" gets confused for the direct personal use 🤦🏻♀️ And yet when I switch to "one/oneself", I get complaints of speaking too academically/lecturing. Maybe I just need to switch to y'all all the time 😅
Wow, what a mistake this was…please remove.
Holy cow. As somebody who saw your initial post prior to you deleting it so I do have the full context here, believe me when I say that you are reacting in a concerning manner to @cuddlefaery benign response to your original post.
@jmcalpine Okay, in order to have a post remove, you have to reach out a Moderator to ask him or her to remove it. That's all I wanted to say...Take care! 😁👍
@jmcalpine As a fellow educator, you should also recognize that context matters. Public forums are for discussion - people are not always going to agree with or blindly affirm what you post. When you contribute publicly, you are opening up a topic for a variety of responses.
I no longer have the text of your original post to reference, so I can't quote it precisely. As I mentioned before, my intent was to share information and encourage people reading these forums generally to reconsider their usage of a problematic system. I recognize in hindsight that my use of general "you" likely made it feel more personally directed than it was.
I would also think that, as an educator, you'd recognize the value of teachable moments and the expansion of discussion beyond the strict scope of an original post. If a student raised a tangential question during a lesson, I wouldn't shut it down — I'd encourage their curiosity, and redirect if timing required it. That said, your anchor chart analogy doesn't quite map here: we are not in a supervisory professional relationship. We are participants in a public discussion forum, which is a fundamentally different context.
If my response felt off topic, the natural move in a public forum is to redirect the conversation back to your original point - not to exit entirely. I do hope you'll reconsider, because this community is richer for more voices in it.
Thank you! I did. The intent of my posts truly didn’t match their impact and I’m sorry for that. I was just trying to speak sincerely. I’m going to stay away from the message boards from now on. I wish all of you well.
Please leave me alone now. Thank you
@jmcalpine I wish you well on your journey and I am so sorry about your diagnosis. Sounds like you are the type of human being we can ill afford to lose. I hope you are as comfortable as possible. I sincerely mean that.