One of the most profound books I've read is "The 5 Love Languages", by Gary Chapman. The concept is that each of us measures how much we are loved by our love language. According to Dr. Chapman the five are: Quality time, Words of affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical touch. We each have one of those as our primary language, so that if gifts is our love language we believe someone giving us a gift loves us more than someone who says nice things.
We also tend to demonstrate our love in the language most important to us. As an example, my love language is acts of service, so when I do something for someone it is showing love. If their language is gifts, the act of service doesn't have the same impact. The concept of his book is to learn the love language of those around you so you can demonstrate your love in the language they understand and appreciate.
Each member of my family has a different love language, so this understanding was crucial to our relationships. My perception of "hanging out" was that it was a waste of valuable time, until I recognized that my wife's language of quality time made this an important activity. Even though these truths have slowly sunk in over the years since I read his book, it's only been recently that it dawned on me that the opposites made up what irritated me.
If someone has a love language of words of affirmation, words that do not affirm has a far greater effect on them than other people. In my language of acts of service, not doing small things that I expected were more powerful than negative words or non-existant gifts. So that's why the things people do and say affect each of us so differently. It requires more than this recognition to do something about it, but it is a start.
