What His Love Language Looks Like: Acts Of Service
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
We’ve all heard it said that there are five basic love languages — asserted by Gary Chapman, the author of The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts. Chapman says that our way of showing love can be broken down into these five categories: words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service, and receiving gifts. While we don’t possess only one love language, we tend to favor a couple of them over the others.
So how do you say ‘I love you’, without actually saying those three words? Possibly by watching your significant other’s favorite movie with them, or maybe by offering a few sweet words of encouragement, or maybe quick kiss on the cheek before you head out to work. To say I love you is an incredibly personal act – no two people will express their love the exact same way.
But here’s an arguably better question for you: how does your significant other say ‘I love you’? How do they show you their devotion, appreciation, and affection? The greater understanding we have of our significant other’s brand of love, the more we’re able to offer them a kind of love specific to them — words or actions that would make them feel loved uniquely. Learning their love language, even if it’s not natural to us, will serve to deepen the relationship.
Being that there are five love languages, and every one of them is so unique, we’ve decided to create a series of “What His Love Language Looks Like” articles, each dedicated to a specific love language. This week, we’re focusing on acts of service.
What are acts of service?
Acts of service is a love language that focuses on recognizing and fulfilling a person’s real-world, day-to-day needs — performing a task or deed that will make their life that little bit (or lot a bit) simpler. For someone whose love language is acts of service, thoughtful gestures can mean the world — more than a fancy weekend getaway or a few glowing words of encouragement.
How can we offer acts of service?
This love language, while requiring us to go out of our way enough in order to express it well, doesn’t take a grand, over-the-top gesture. Instead, it can be expressed in small, simple, everyday actions, like:
Getting up 15 minutes earlier to make him breakfast on a busy day
Remembering to pick up his prescription before he runs out
Offering to do the grocery shopping
Warming up the car for him
Asking “Is there anything I can do?” when he’s got too much on his plate.
Offering to get him something while you’re up
What acts of service can do for him.
The most unique aspect of acts of service is that it’s incredibly easy to incorporate into our everyday lives — and committing ourselves to becoming well-versed in this love language will certainly give him the gift of feeling seen and loved while his life and all its moving pieces are looked after.
This won’t just make him feel cherished by us, but help take off some of the pressure that a full life inevitably builds up over time — making him feel like we’re the very definition of a partner to him. For the man who thrives off of acts of service, our actions have the ability to speak far, far louder than our words.
