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Omid comments on Open Thread for January 17 - 23 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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How would I tell my girlfriend that gifts my love language love language without looking like I'm exploiting her for free stuff.
How do you know that gifts are your love language? What experiences did you had in your life that makes you conclude that's your main love language?
Because of how excited I got when I received gifts in the past. For example , I cherish an expensive scarf a girlfriend gave me even though I would never have bought it for more than a few dollars myself.
The issue with that paragraph is that it doesn't contain the word "love". One could read the sentence as you using your girlfriend to obtain an expensive item for free.
If you don't want to appear shallow, then go deeper into the meaning and the emotions. Of course there are valid reasons why you might not go deep on a online forum.
Talking about past partners is probably no good idea for the first date. Further down the road you could just start by asking your girlfriend about her love languages. What made her feel loved in the past? Go through each of the five love languages and ask to what extend they matter to her.
If you do that, she's likely ask you as well.
If you also get excited by cheap gifts (flowers, candy, nice thrift-store finds, whatever) then tell her that. If the gifts have to be expensive for you to appreciate them, though, that's kind of awkward though maybe if you give her gifts of similar value it comes out fair.
I'd actually thought about recommending this test on Lesswrong before. I don't know if the Five Love Languages accurately presents any theoretical/neurological underpinnings, but descriptively, it seems very accurate, at least for me.
(I'm the opposite of Omid -- physical touch and quality time together are very important to me; words of affirmation are a little important; but receiving acts of service or gifts does nothing for me, even though I enjoy performing acts of service/giving gifts to my SO) .
I have to agree with another commenter below--it's best to tell people what you like and what makes you happy.
Don't mean to derail the thread, but my ex-girlfriend tried to have me read/discuss the love language book and it seemed that the categories they established were pretty arbitrary. For me, the love languages book was an impediment to sharing needs, because it brought in seemingly invented categories and questionnaires to fit you to a category when instead you could just say what you want.
I did this with my ex-bf (not the cause of the prefix!) and then next time I told him I was really upset by something at work, I got flowers and felt much happier. And my delight was such that he was happy too.
I'd explain what about the gift from her makes you happy. I don't like tchotchkes or expensive-for-the-sake-of-signalling things, but I liked being surprised by some manifestation of my bf caring for me, especially when it was personal (i.e. in response to a sudden need, or carrying forward an inside joke, or just a lovely note in my inbox).
http://lesswrong.com/lw/jis/tell_culture/
Say what you just said here.
Omid doesn't appear to be the OP -- comment permalink might be more useful if you're referring to a comment that he made in response to that post.
Try sending her a link to the quiz which proports to identify said "love languages", ask her what results she gets, and then tell her what results you got? (Bonus: you get to see her results, which is useful info if you think this quiz and accompanying classification system is useful)
In general, do you have ways in your relationship of asking for things you want and having that be OK?
If so, how do you do it? I would think the same techniques would apply. (In my own relationship, I emphasize symmetry.)
If not, it might be better to start there, and worry about gifts and love-languages later.
I'm currently single so the question is hypothetical.
Ah, gotcha. I guess I'd give the same advice hypothetically... establish a general framework in which asking for things you (both) want is a good thing. This is just a special case of that.
As for how to do that, well, it depends a lot on the people involved. Mostly, my advice is to ask for things you want, and encourage her to do the same, and see where that goes.