Gary Chapman, the author of “The Five Love Languages”, describes five ways in which people often feel loved.  Ashley and I have both read this book, and love languages often come up in discussion when we’re talking about friends, colleagues, or family.  Love in the sense that Gary discusses is often romantic love, but can also be any sense of worth one person receives from another.  To that degree, these love languages can be used to describe how children feel love from their parents or siblings and how friends feel love from each other, just as it can be for describing romantic love.

The five love languages are:

• Quality Time
• Acts of Service
• Words of Affirmation
• Physical Touch
• Gift Giving

Interestingly, gift giving is a love language of many people.  What gets really mysterious about love languages is that you may have love languages that are different than the one to whom you are trying to show love.  I’ll use Ashley and I as an example.  My love languages are words of affirmation, then a second-place tie for acts of service and physical touch.  Ashley’s are first and foremost physical touch, then gift giving and acts of service.

SO MANY PEOPLE MESS THIS PART UP! If you want to show someone your care for them, do not give them what you would like to receive, but what you know they want to receive.  It sounds obvious when stated like this, but most of us really mess this part up by doing what naturally comes to us when we think of doing something loving for another.  The natural thing to do, we think, is the golden rule–to treat others how we’d like to be treated.  This is close, but not correct.

The gotcha in all of this is that you have to know the other person well enough to discover what their love languages are.  That in itself is loving–the discovery of the inherent worth of another, exactly as they are.

So this is how Registree can help out.  If you have a loved one who happens to rate fairly high on the gift giving love language, then knowing what they would like to receive makes a much larger impact in their sense of your care for them.  Sometimes it’s easy to assume that gift registries are impersonal, but if the person took enough time and energy to add items to their Registree list, then it’s a pretty good chance that they would like to receive it.

And if your loved one does not rate as high for gift giving as they do in other areas, then consider other ways in which to show them love.  If your sphere of loved-ones just really don’t get a lot out of receiving gifts, then that’s fine, but do find out what they do get a lot out of, and shower them with it.

Lastly, if you yourself rate high for gift giving as the way you feel loved, then be sure to let your loved ones know this.  It’s not shameful or bad to open yourself up to your loved ones by saying “You know, I really like it when you buy me little things.”  Helping others to know how you receive love pays dividends for life.  Ash and I are a testament to that.

We often joke about those terrible sweaters you used to get when you were a kid.  It might have come from a grandparent or some distant relative that really didn’t know your tastes that well or what you were interested in.  ”Getting a sweater” is our codeword for getting a gift that probably was given with the best of intentions, but completely missed the mark.

At The Registree, Ashley and I have been doing some serious brainstorming about the issues surrounding gift giving in western culture.  Some see gift registries as nothing more than a formal way of declaring your greed.  Others see it as consumerism at its worst, where toys get bought for children over the holidays, they play with them for a week, and then get thrown out three months later.  Or even worse, the child likes playing with the box the toy came in more than the toy itself.  It can get absurd at its extreme.

So Ashley and I will be blogging a bit more about what it means to be a thoughtful gift giver, as well as a thoughtful gift receiver.  When I say thoughtful, I mean thoughtful in the sense that you put thought and care into how the gift will be used, as well as how the gift will be received.  Not as in “aww, that was so thoughtful of you Grandma”.  It’s our goal with The Registree to create a simple app that allows you to be more thoughtful in both what you give and what you receive.  And there are some really creative ways to keep the consumerism and greed to a minium that normally stigmatizes gift giving.

In some upcoming posts we’ll talk about the love language of gift giving, non-monetary gifts, handmade/homemade/diy gifts, and suggestions for how to be a responsible (and quite frankly, fun) gift receiver.  We look forward to your comments as well, so be sure to let us know what you think!