Ok, I'm hearing you ask, what's love language? Well it's exactly what is says, it's the language that speaks love to you. For some people love language is asking about their day, others it will be asking about a particular hobby. For most it's a language that says you care about them. When my partner says he has a headache, rather than just telling him to get some pain killers, I ask him a few questions to decipher whether we can tackle it in some other way. Have you eaten today? How much water have you drunk? Did you sleep well? These questions let him know that I'm interested in him and also committed to not wanting the headache to continue or reoccur. However, this was not always his understanding of this line of questioning. He used to believe that I didn't think he actually had a headache because his love language was such that if he's hurting I should want that pain to stop as quickly as possible. So now the love language has become conflict language and ain't nobody want that so it's important to learn who you're in a relationship with and who you are in that relationship.
Meredith Belbin was a researcher and management consultant who devised, that the most successful teams were made up of people who fulfilled the 9 roles he formulated. You may be wondering how something created for business management can relate to your relationship but I'm about to clearly demonstrate exactly why these two entities are part of the same world, just with different purposes.
Relationships take work, it doesn't pay wages in the traditional sense but it requires you to think, to put in effort and show up. When these things are achieved you're rewarded with a loving, comforting, reliable relationship.
Teamwork makes the dream work, when you know who your team is and what it can do then success is almost guaranteed. There should be no better definition of team than you and your boo.
Human nature and culture play just as big a part in any work environment as it does in a relationship...don't believe me, just ask Google why they build the offices they do.
Now, let's move onto the actual roles, these are broken down into 3 Main Categories:
Do any of these resonate with you? Maybe you feel you touch on more than one or even all. I think that as people we probably relate a little bit to all of them, depending on the situation or the people you're with, but if we're honest with ourselves, we know that there's one over all the rest that describes us best.
There will be some of you who are looking for things that help you with your friendships, or your children or maybe even your parents. Now for some of you reading this, you're not in a relationship with someone you're sexually attracted to, well, this can still be applied. Looking at the traits below may help you to understand your own weaknesses and thus the weaknesses of others.
It's not great to have to think about the negatives of who we are but when we can understand them, we can begin to accept them. When we accept them, we can recognise our triggers, at this point we can estimate when they're about to rear their ugly heads. No, I haven't gone completely off subject, this whole process leads you to your love language. Knowing who you are or who you could be, in various relationships, will enable you to know who you want to be around and whether to force yourself into or remove yourself from these situations. It will also help you to understand what soothes your soul and what aggravates the devil in you. Don't rush the process, take some time to think. Really be honest with yourself about which one(s) of the role(s) best suits you and then the other person.
Next week we'll look at how the roles work with (and sometimes against) each other.
Stay tuned!!!