The Five Love Languages with Emily Writes

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Welcome back to the girls get off podcast today we're joined by Emily rights bestselling author columnist and podcaster She's ranty and ragey and she's obsessed with talking about sex and sexuality. Welcome to hello It's so nice to be here with you Always love having a chat. Yeah, it's always such a good laugh I feel like it's been ages since we've got to hang out and talk. I know I know It definitely has. I don't think we've had you on for a live since the... Yeah, yeah. Gosh, that feels like a million years ago. I know. It is so long ago. And I think, I mean, today we're going to chat a little bit about something that people have been asking us for. It's something that pops up here and there. And we thought, who better to chat to than Emily about love languages? Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about love languages. It's... Um, I get lots of questions about love languages too. And it's one of my favorite things to talk about. So yeah. So cool. I just did the love language quiz thing and I felt like I just wasted a good 50 more minutes in my life. So sorry if I'm a bit of a negative Nancy in this one. No, it's fine. Love languages are great, but I was just like, how many times do they want to ask me if I like gifts? Did not like gifts. Like honestly, in that quiz, it was like 80% of the questions like, would you rather a gift or this? And I'm going to do a, I'm going to do a 180 for a second for the people who don't follow at Emily writes on Instagram. Um, tell us a little bit about yourself. Oh okay well I'm a writer. I've got a couple of books. Mainly I write sort of comedy satire writing about parenting and that type of thing and yeah I've got two boys. I'm a queer mama living in Pooniki and yeah I have a greyhound called Twinkle and a cat called Bruce. and I'm just yeah that's about it. I never know how to do intros they're quite awkward but I don't know did I miss anything. All that's important. I do a newsletter um no the most yeah I do a newsletter three times a week and that's kind of my writing that's how I make my income and I have my third book coming out in September but yeah I just kind of I guess mainly writer sex toy fiend. I think that's how we caught up and ended up working with Girls Get Off. I was doing a tour with Rebecca Kyle and we gave away Missy Minys at shows and just the roars of the crowd for the Missy Minnie. So yeah, that's me. I love it. And I think that highlights of your Instagram account are certainly... for me anyway, centered around Bruce the cat and how your children interact with Bruce because he must be the most chilled out, laid back cat I've ever seen. Yeah, he's a very interesting cat. I'm not quite sure what the deal is with Bruce, but he gets, I've got a... a seven year old and a nine year old and the seven year old just like hauls Bruce around the house constantly and so I like to just film videos of him carrying the poor cat around but the cat has never scratched or wriggled away or anything it's just kind of like a bit slow for a cat so yeah but we love Bruce we do. He's very this morning I like every morning I wake up to them speaking to each other. It's a very one-sided conversation because Bruce is a cat. And, but my son is like, where is your halo? You're an angel. And you are a queen. You are the king of the world. You know, so yeah, they're very attached to each other. Well, one-sided. Again. So yeah. Oh, funny. Okay. So yeah, as Viv said before, we've brought you on today so we can talk about love languages. So change my mind. So I reckon that I can change your mind. I am that much of a zealot for love languages. So love languages have been around for a long time. It was the first book that it was about love languages. It was the guy who created it is like this evangelical Christian guy. which should not put you off. He wrote it in like the 70s, I think. And it actually is surprisingly still holds up. But I think the thing for me is I've always kind of separated it out from those original books because it's kind of like when something becomes something everybody talks about that you can separate it from. you know, the original undertaking of it, which was probably, he was probably talking about love languages so that like women would stop expecting their husbands to do stuff around the house. But now I think years and years and years later we can make it what we want and we can pull out the best parts of love languages and leave the parts that don't resonate with us. Like, I mean, that's the same with all the relationship and sex advice, isn't it? You take the bits that resonate with you and mean something to you. So I'll just quickly cover the five love languages for you. So there are words of affirmation. Now words of affirmation is not like a text message that says you up or DTF. It's like actual, like I feel I can see you're working really hard at work and I feel proud of you. You know, like I can see you're working hard. You're doing really So that is words of affirmation. If you've got some fuck boy in your DMs going DTS, that is not words of affirmation. So next is physical touch. And so physical touch is as you would expect, but it's also not things like a fuck boy like jackhammering your cervix in bed. It is things like... hugging and kissing and holding hands and you know, like my husband's physical touch is like as we've got older because your love languages change as you age and in different relationships they're not fixed, they're not something that you have one love language and that's your language for ever. But as we've got older I've noticed that my husband is much more into physical touch like he likes to hold hands. something he never really did before. And when he says goodbye, I mean, when he goes to work, he always kisses me on the forehead and that's nice. So physical touch, not like blow jobs and stuff. Because if you're a true friend or husband, it's like, oh, physical touch is my love language, I need like a blower every day. That is not, that is not it. So. That doesn't count. I feel like guys need to hear this. So, receiving gifts, this is the one you were talking about before Jo. So receiving gifts is, this is also not like, you know, getting blowjobs as a gift because it's your birthday. It's around things like being really thoughtful and making... your partner like a priority around gift giving so it could be something like surprising them with something that you know will be really meaningful to them so it's not necessarily big romantic gestures it can be something small so like any type of gifting you know and gift giving is my love language like for how i like to show love to other people so love languages are kind of how you like to get love but also how you like to give love. Like I'm really big on gift giving so when I go out and if I see something and I'm like oh my bestie would love that I will always buy it for them because giving gifts is how I say oh I love you know so it's you need to think about love languages as um how you like to get love, but also how you like to give love. So there's also, so we've had three so far, words of affirmation, physical touch, receiving gifts. Next one is the most common love language and that's quality time. So if you like to spend a lot of time with your partner uninterrupted time, I don't like to spend that much time with my husband. We've been married, we've been together 20 years. I'm about done with. the amount of time we spend together. I prefer... I prefer him giving me things. So, gives me stuff. Love it. No, that leads well into the final one. This is actually how I like to receive love from my husband and that is acts of service. So you know when like your partner or whatever, this is very heteronormative, but if you're like, if your partner takes out, like when my husband like vacuums and takes out the rubbish, oh my God. I'm so gagging for it when I see him do stuff like that. That is absolutely my, you know, he knows if he wants to turn me on, just take the kids away for the day. And then by the time he gets home, I'll be, you know, not I won't give him a blowjob, but I might like, yeah, I might give him a wristy while we watch TV. So, um, so that's acts of service. And so those are the five love languages. And as I said, it's really about like, so for me, my love languages are acts of service. I like, you know, I like to have things done for me and that type of thing that make my life easier. So chores and that type of thing, anything that makes my life less stressful. And you know, like how I said that love languages change over time. That's like a real thing of being the age that I'm at with kids who take up heaps of my time with a really long-term relationship. It makes sense that somebody in my age bracket with the lifestyle I have and everything would like acts of service as a love language is. So when I was a lot. younger, like when we first met like 20 years ago, my love language was probably something like words of affirmation, like being told I love you and stuff because I wanted that security. So it changes over time. And the purpose of it isn't to go, this is my love language and it never changes and you have to meet me, you know, like a physical touch, give me a blowjob. Or, you know, that's not what it's about. It's about... thinking about what does my partner need to feel loved and how can I make sure they know that they're loved and how can I make sure that I'm loved, that I know that they love me. You know, so it's all of those things and you know, it is a really good thing to just have as a communication style for your whole life. You know, like even if you don't have a partner, you know when you have like a bestie or something and you're like, or you have anxiety or something around, oh, I haven't talked to them for ages because of the pandemic, I hope our friendship is still tight and stuff like that. Love language is a really good way of checking in with all of the loves of your life. So your best friends, your siblings, your... children, your parents, you know, all those things. So it doesn't have to be sexual. It doesn't have to be only physical relationship based. Does that make sense? Yeah. Totally. Guys, I think my dog needs to shit. I just need to open the door. Quality time with your dog. Do the quiz for free online. I don't think it's completely necessary to do the quiz. I think you can just read about each of the things and decide for yourself. But one thing you can do is talk about what you think, like sit down with your partner or your mates in the group chat, whatever, and say, this is what I think you are, and this is what I think I am, and then fill it out and see if you're right. Yeah, nice. I saw a meme last week actually, and it was something like, what are you wasting time like cooking me dinner or something, I just wanna be fucked on the back of the boat in the behinds. And I was like, I can relate to that one. I'm pretty sure that's every one of our love languages to be fair. I liked what you were saying in terms about how they can change, because when I was doing it, I was like, oh, there's been certain times where one has been more important, but then for me right now, Um, it was, it was quite interesting to see the results. So my, my top one was acts of service by quite, quite a lot as well. Um, and probably just also resonating to the questions of like, yeah, help me. You know, when someone takes a little bit. Yeah. That's interesting actually, because that was one point I came across too, is that that's, um, apart from gifts, I was only 3% on gift giving. Um, Um, but that acts of service was my next lowest, but I think that changed after being in a controlling relationship and you weren't like actually allowed to do anything yourself, you know? And so I think now, like if someone does something for me, I can't do it myself. Maybe why I'm single. Absolutely right. And I mean, the thing is, if you think about how, um, even things like how our context around when we do a quiz like that or when we think about love language would change all the time because you know we've been sheltering um because my eldest child is immune compromised so we haven't been out much because of the pandemic so quality time is not it like i think when i did the test again this morning to see how um different i was from last time i did it quality time was almost at zero because I'm like me and my husband are in each other's pockets. We don't need any more time together right now. But we acts of service is really high because we're both really feeling the pressure of being under a pandemic. And if you think if you're a brand new relationship or you have one partner who works a huge amount, then quality time would be really high. So the point of what a lot of people get wrong about love languages is they think that it's fixed and they think I'm one thing so they say to their partner gift-giving or like physical touch is my thing so you need to do that all the time and that's what I need and there can be a disconnect with what's high for you and what's a high scoring love language for you and your partner like physical touch for me. because I have kids, I'm always being touched out. So I don't, you know, I don't really like touching that much at the moment, you know, like it changes all the time, but it's like, my husband would love nothing more than if I gave him like a pash each day. And I'm like, oh, I'm too old for passion. You know, like I just do not feel the need to pash at the moment, but I know that his love language is touch and he really loves a good pash. So, you know, the difference I guess is that I go, okay, well it's the weekend, I've had a few rosés, I'll give him a pass, you know, I'll throw a bone his way. And so, you know, this is ways you can go, okay, I may not be that into doing, like buying a gift for somebody. Like my husband's a terrible gift giver. Love him to pieces, but. If I get one more fucking PowerShell airing set, I'm gonna die. But I recognize that he can't buy gifts. It is not his good. He's not good at that. Not his strength whatsoever. But he's become attuned to the fact that I love coffee. Coffee is my love language. And each morning before I get up, he like sort of gently wakes me up when I'm in bed. He comes in with a cup of coffee every morning, gives me a kiss on the forehead, gives me my coffee. And to me, it's really, yeah. And I mean, for me, it's kind of like going, this actually is a real sign that he cares about. My day wants to make my day start off a good way. He knows I need coffee for survival. or else I won't be okay in this world. You know, so it's kind of like he has met me where he can meet me, you know? And he's never gonna be the type to do a impromptu romantic getaway, which would be my dream. But it's also like this way of he's going, I, you know. I care for you, I'm thoughtful towards you. And all of these love languages are just about being thoughtful about what your partner needs and what will make them feel loved. And it's really as simple as that. Like people over-complicated it, but they don't need to, you know? And I talked to him this morning and I said to him, oh, hey, you know about love languages? And he said, no, even though we've discussed this so many times. So that just shows that he doesn't listen to me. But I said to him, remember the five love languages? And he was like, no. And so I told him again, and I said, so which one do you think you are? With me knowing full well he's physical to us. And he said, I'm all of them. But I actually thought it's a really good way of looking at the love languages All of us are all of the love languages. It's just what we need on any given day or something like that. So the point of love language is actually the conversation you have, where you say you sit down and you have, you know, time with your partner, where you say, what are we needing right now? Like, you know, if you have a brand new baby or you've- started a new job and you're working all hours and you know quality time is really important to you and your partner It's about sitting down and saying Hey quality time is kind of off the table for us right now We can't do that because of my work or a new baby or whatever or whatever your thing is. So you say Maybe acts of service is going to be our thing We really focus on doing for each other to make sure that we feel really cared about and considered and loved, you know, until we can be communicating the way that we want to be, you know? So yeah. Love that. I guess just basically being mindful that just because you feel like something is your love language doesn't necessarily mean they will appreciate it because it isn't as... Yeah, absolutely. Don't do something you want done for yourself, actually. Absolutely, yeah. How about, so you mentioned your husband's physical touches, that is a result of having the conversation, or are there other ways we can find out what our partners or our friends' love languages are? Yeah, well I think a lot of it is fairly intuitive. Like, I noticed that it was actually around the time that lots of our friends were getting divorced. That sounds so bad. But around the time lots of our friends were getting divorced, he started like holding my hand and reaching for me and like when I walked past giving me cuddles and stuff and I realized it was because he was like feeling a bit like insecure of like, oh my god, are we gonna be the next? Because it can be a bit destabilizing when you see lots of couples around you split up. because we never know what's going on behind closed doors, but it can feel like, oh, I thought they were a real solid couple and now they've split, you know. So I started to go, oh, okay, one, he needs more reassurance that we are happy and okay and, you know, and two, he's clearly seeking that through touch, you know, and so I think we can intuit quite a lot. But I also think that when life is really busy, and I mean, with the pandemic and everything on the news and everything, I keep hearing from so many people that people just don't have like the mental bandwidth right now to cope with all of the stuff being thrown at them all the time. So in my view, a conversation is always better than just relying on intuiting what people like. I mean, I... I think that especially some people are just really bad at being able to pick up on this stuff. Like it didn't seem to matter how many times I said to my husband, I would, Christmas, I would organise every single gift for everybody because I'm gift giving is my love language and I love it. But then I would get like a gift that I felt just hadn't been thoughtful or you know. and I would get really pissed off about it. I was like, why can you not see that I want a thoughtful gift and I want all those things? And then I realized it was about being a grown-up and saying to him, I really don't like this gift you gave me. I want you to try harder. And it sounds real brutal, but we let a lot of things slide. And I think we let people go to, or, you know, if say gift giving is your love language or something like that and you get a gift that you feel like, you know, gas station flowers or something like that. I don't know, I'm trying to think of something because my husband has never even bought gas station flowers for me because he thinks flowers are just dead and why would you give someone flowers? And I'm like, because I fucking want flowers, that's why you should give me flowers. But, um, But the thing is, I think that we often go, oh well, he's just not good at that. And again, I'm being very heteronormative, but I think it's because cis men in particular, straight men are often really bad at this. And that's why I'm saying he is, you know. But they will often say, oh, I'm just not good at that. I'm just, I just can't do that. It's just not, you know, and I'm just kind of like, well, it's important to me. It's important to me to feel like you've been really thoughtful about what you're doing. So if you can't be thoughtful in the gifts you give me, work out another way to be thoughtful, to show me that you love me. Because every human in the world needs to know, needs to feel secure in their place in relationships. You know, whether you, that's with your friends, your besties, whether it's with your parents, your children, your siblings, all of us want to feel secure. and safe and the knowledge that the people we choose to spend our time with care about us and love us and want us to be happy you know so yeah i don't know if i quite got to the point that you're getting to but i'm trying to say that we can guess but we shouldn't just assume that they can't guess and we should also hold people accountable for you know meeting us where we reciprocal. It isn't just one person doing all the work. Yeah and I think that the way you put that, I quite like how blunt it is because also it leaves nothing to question and then there's no room for you to walk away and say I wish they did this or why aren't they doing it this way, you know if you haven't even had the conversation. Yeah, I mean you know I've been with my husband since I was 17, you know I've been with him longer than I've like more than half my life has been in partnership with my husband and I think one of the things that we've just got to the stage in our life is, is we're choosing each other every day and it's a more intentional relationship than it ever has been because I think it's really important for people to not become complacent in long term relationships where they just kind of go, well, I'm here, you're here, we've got kids, you know, let's just keep going. So my husband and I make a real... effort with each other to check in often and be like, how are we doing as a couple? Are we still, are there things we need to address? How's our sex life? How's our, you know, all those things because you want to be intentional about the relationships that you're in. We've only got one life and there's no point spending it with somebody who doesn't, you know. care about your needs. If somebody doesn't care about your needs, you need to dump them. You do it here first. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And sooner rather than later is better. And no, if I did that quiz again, though, now it would be totally different because I was doing it just purely from a point of view of what I. wanted to receive, like what my love language was to receive. But yeah, no, I'm the same as you, because I love giving, I love giving gifts and that sort of, probably the complete opposite, to be honest. I think that was gonna be one of my questions, because I feel like last time I did the love language quiz, there was an option for like how you receive love and then how you give love. And then I could only find the quiz for how you receive it. I think that's the one that we did, Jo. I was also thinking the same, I was like, oh it's, it is different. Yeah and you know it can be different. Like I have um some friends, like acts of service is by far my number one with how I want to be loved but I don't like doing stuff so it's not how I like to give love. So but I love to like, like nobody's gonna find me helping them move house. Like I love you but. I'm not helping you move house. I will get you a really good house woman gift. So I think so that it's about, you know, it keeps coming back to that thing of like, you can do a quiz or not do a quiz, but it's really about thinking. It's about having that conversation with yourself, with your partner in the besties group chat, you know, and just. seeing where you sit because one thing that's helped me a lot is going Gift-giving is really important to me, but I really recognize that some people I really care about just they're not that into gifts and so When I give them gifts, it's because I know that it's my way of showing them love But if in return they don't get me something for Christmas or don't blah blah. It's kind of a reminder to me to say I did that for my own, to show love my own way and so them reciprocating in exactly the same love language or reciprocating in a way that isn't my love language, that's not their fault and it's not my fault, you know. So does that make sense? Like I think it's, you know, when people are kind of like want to... have lots of hugs and stuff like that. And I'm just like, oh, I'm touched out and COVID and blah, blah. Don't ever touch me again. You know, it's kind of about going, oh, that's a real way that they feel connected to me is by having a cuddle, you know. Like I'm pretty sure that all kids under five, their love languages touch and it's a lot. Just thinking of me on the couch last night. Do you have to keep touching me? Yeah. Our little guys. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was just like touching me. Exactly. So, yeah. So I think it's just about thinking about how can I best show love and receive love in a way that suits me and the people I care about. Because all we want is for the people we love to know we love them. And sometimes it's not as simple as just... I love you sometimes isn't enough just saying that. Yeah. I love it. And so where to from here for those who want to learn a little bit more about love languages? Yeah, well, you can just Google love languages and there is a very basic quiz. The quiz might annoy the shit out of you. I'm not surprised, Jo, that you were a bit like, oh. The quiz is very basic, but I think it's just a good starting point and there's lots of like, you can just write down the love languages and then sit and have, you know, a cup of tea or a wine or whatever your poison is with your partner or, or chuck it in the group chat and with your besties and then have the conversation because it's really about the conversation more than, you know, putting, doing a quiz or anything like that. So Yeah, just have the conversation, just talk about whether you feel you fit into any of the love languages and if you do, yeah, chatting about them and, you know, seeing if it leads to a conversation about how to better have your needs met. I love it. That's amazing, Emily. You're so funny and so informative all at the same time. Emily writes NZ on Instagram. I got that wrong just before. But tell us about your column and your newsletter and all the other places people can get your Yeah, so if you Google Emily writes weekly you can sign up to my newsletter So I send out a newsletter to paid subscribers three times a week But if you can sign up as a free subscriber and then you get like I think it's one newsletter a week you get and I kind of write just sort of funny random stuff there and Yeah, that's probably the best place to find me is Emily Writes Weekly, but I'm on Facebook and I'm on Instagram. So, yeah, and buy my book in September. I don't know what it's called yet. The publisher keeps coming back and forth and I don't like any of their titles. So when it has a title, I'll tell you what it is. So, yeah, but the book's kind of about growing up and... you know that feeling of like, when am I going to be a grown up? I'm like, married with kids, married with kids and like, still waiting to become a grown up. So it's kind of about that. So yeah. I love it. Cool. Oh, well, thanks again so much for coming on the podcast and we will chat to you soon. No worries. It was so, so great to chat and yeah, talk soon. Thanks, Evelyn. See ya. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the Girls Get Off podcast. You can find us on Instagram at Girls Get Off. You can join our Facebook group, Girls Get Off Uncensored. I think we've got more than 20,000 members in there at the moment. And if you'd like to leave us a rating or review, that always helps us get higher in the charts and every week we'll pick the most creative review to win a Missy Mini. Thanks for listening.