Love Languages, mistranslated.

And how to forgive the past, even when it isn’t apologising

By Molly Thompson

Let’s be honest, returning to your childhood home feels like reversing the clock, and with it, unearthing stifled resentments which are now fermenting under the heat of social isolation.

As I stew in a house of haunted memories, tensions between my mother and I refresh themselves with shiny confidence. It is suffocating and in escape, I run—past the playground my mom taught me how to swing on, by the church she forced me to attend, and each passing spot is a monument to everything she has done for me. 

Perhaps it feels too long since she told me she loved me, was proud of me, or any words of affirmation, really. But returning to the house that stores these memories, the walls depict a hundred loving images: all the lunches she packed, the clothes she washed, the way she parted my hair before school. They remind me of everything she has done for me while my eyes were blinded by tears from the distance I felt.

Looking in the past, with its unchangeable flexibility, makes it easier to decipher disguised love, lost in the unresolved differences between love languages. My mom’s acts of service clashed with my need for verbal affirmation. With miles of distance and months of hindsight, her actions suddenly become clear and comforting. Quarantined with the past, my love language bilingualism becomes clouded by proximity, and my desire for explicit affection grows needy.

Solving this language barrier does not lie in the persistence of the Duolingo Owl, rather in the persistence of empathy toward the emotions of others. Appreciate these boundaries, but cross the lines occasionally, dipping your toes in someone else’s love language to express your love in more than one way. You just might be surprised how many wounds begin to heal.