Time

In his series of books on the subject, Dr. Gary Chapman describes five "love languages": quality time, words of affirmation, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Each of us has a need to feel loved, relates Chapman, but sometimes the love language we are most responsive to (the same language we are most inclined to express our love in) is not the love language most meaningful to those we love. As a result, we may miss out on expressions of love we aren't normally tuned in to, while at the same time wondering why all the love we give goes unappreciated.

Of the five, the language of quality time can perhaps be the most challenging to understand--especially for those who are predisposed to one of the other four. ("After all," says the person for whom acts of service are most resonant, "I invest so much time in taking care of everything, what more do they want?") Likewise, buying (or better yet, making) a gift for another--when done with the thoughtfulness of love--takes time.

Words of affirmation, at first, may seem less time-bound. How long does it take to say something nice? Yet, anyone who has ever had a business leadership course or developed their public speaking skills knows that affirmation is most meaningful when it captures how the recipient's contribution was experienced by others. Rather than lauding one with superlative adjectives, speaking of something the person did, and how you felt as you experienced it, goes much further. Conveying such anecdotes take a little while. Doing the preparatory soul searching to really capture that value, can take much longer.

At the risk of privileging the last of the five, one might suggest that physical touch is the most ancient and fundamental of the love language. Evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar, for instance, argues that reciprocal grooming--the mode of physical touch most characteristic of life for our primate cousins--is the mechanism by which early hominids tended to social bonds, resolved conflict, and maintained group cohesion. Grooming (physical touch), however, just like the other love languages, takes time.

Indeed, Dunbar argues that the time it takes to engage in grooming places a constraint on the size of social groups. At some point, a group could be so large that the amount of time it would take any given individual to engage in reciprocal grooming with each member of that group--so as to keep social bonds strong--would become prohibitive. No time would be left for other activities, like finding food or getting sleep. This, Dunbar tells us, is the purpose of spoken language: with it we are able to "groom" multiple individuals at once, and so share our lives with more people than we could do otherwise.

Some social bonds, however, are deeper than others, and while hanging out with a group of friends and chatting is important, so too is talking intimately with one person with whom we share a meaningful connection. It is at these times, however, that language can take the most time of all. This can be a positive experience, where we lose all track of time, so engrossed we are in the words of the other. At other times, however, the words exchanged aren't nearly so positive, and we find that hours have passed in an attempt to simply communicate.

Meanwhile, we still need to find food, get sleep, attend to the daily activities of living. Time is rarely found, but often lost. Love, sometimes, can seem much the same. The challenge is loving with the time we have.