I was thinking about
5 Love Languages, Attachment Styles,
the last session,
the last Laura´s article and
The Tao on Love, and our romance novels, so a bit of musings here.
The Cs already said about Attachments Styles that:
How valid or useful is the Attachment Style system now in use for almost 70 years and seemingly gaining credence rapidly? Is this system more useful when applying the theory that the four styles are not absolute categories, but more like focal points in a spectrum, and individual styles may move within the spectrum depending on their state of mind and current circumstances?
(L) Okay. So, is the system more useful if it is applied as a spectrum?
A: Yes
Q: (L) Is there anything in particular you can say about it?
A: 60 percent is genetic inheritance and only 40 percent is nurture.
cassiopaeatranscripts.org
So, on top of attachments, we have also 5 Love Languages (LL); I played with Grok, to give me comparison, and he said:
No, attachment styles and the 5 love languages are not basically describing the same thing—they're distinct concepts that address different aspects of relationships, though they can overlap and influence each other.
Attachment styles, rooted in early childhood experiences with caregivers, form the emotional foundation for how people bond, trust, and handle intimacy in adult relationships.
There are four main types: secure (comfortable with closeness and independence), anxious (fearful of abandonment, seeking constant reassurance), avoidant (prioritizing independence, uncomfortable with emotional vulnerability), and disorganized/fearful-avoidant (a mix of anxious and avoidant traits, often stemming from trauma).
These styles shape core patterns like conflict resolution, emotional security, and responses to closeness or separation. In contrast,
the 5 love languages—words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch—focus on preferred ways to express and receive affection in relationships.
They're more about communication styles for love, helping partners align on surface-level expressions to avoid misunderstandings, but they don't delve into underlying emotional wiring or childhood influences. While they're not the same, there are connections: attachment styles often influence which love languages someone prefers or how they respond to them.
For example:
- People with secure attachment are typically flexible with all love languages.
- Anxious individuals might crave words of affirmation and quality time for reassurance, and they're more interested in partners who express love through touch, quality time, or gifts.
- Avoidant people may lean toward acts of service (practical over emotional) while avoiding physical touch or verbal affirmations, and they're generally less likely to express affection through any love language or show interest in partners with strong preferences.
- Fearful-avoidant types might fluctuate, sometimes pulling away from physical touch due to trust issues.
Some experts argue attachment styles matter more because they address the "roots" of relational issues (like insecurity or avoidance from past experiences), while love languages are like the "flowers"—helpful for enhancement but ineffective without a stable foundation.
Insecure attachments can create cycles of conflict or disconnection that love languages alone can't fix, but understanding both can lead to better self-awareness, communication, and growth toward healthier dynamics.
But could they also be connected? What if our either upbringing, programs, karmic lessons, and so on, all are jumbled up and fall on our true character and our true
I?
My LLs are Acts of Service and Physical Touch (I scored 33 and 32 percent respectively) and I observed that during my cycle, one or the other is more dominant. But is it really so? I´m reminded here of this short video (only about a minute):
So, this comes back to what if one partner has LL i.e. Words of Affirmation and another has i.e. Receiving Gifts; and they have no idea about the concept of LLs, and one keeps buying another a chocolates while another keeps telling the other all the wonderful things - but they don´t hear each other because each expresses their love in a way they want to receive the love and with so diametrically opposite LLs, so there´s a great possibility they are stuck in "unloving" relationship.
Again, what if all of that is simply either learned behaviour or some karmic burden or whatever?
From the book
The Tao of Loving, it says (here it is focused more on men but I think it applies to women too; my comments are in italic, i.e.
[M: comment]):
Nearly thirty years ago Rene Spitz, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Medical School, discovered that more than 30 per cent of the babies at orphanages do not survive their first year of the impersonal, loveless institutional life, regardless of adequate food, materially hygienic surroundings and excellent medical care. And in recent years, the noted Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget has emphasized the vital importance of loving/touching and communication to the well-being and healthy growth of infants. Such loving/touching and communication are equally vital to adult men and women. And this has only lately been popularized in the West by, among others, Masters and Johnson in their third book, The Pleasure Bond. They feel that human happiness and well-being are almost unattainable without regular loving/touching between adult men and women. This of course is very similar to the Yin-Yang harmony we are talking about in this book except that the ancient Taoists emphasized the importance of the man acquiring the ability to regulate his emission.
This stress laid by the Tao upon ejaculation control is to provide the man and woman with an almost unlimited capacity and opportunity for touching and loving each other. For it is useless to advise an act which most men find difficult - to touch his woman lovingly whenever she is near and at leisure. Almost any man will understand that when he is tired, he usually prefers not to be touched (before he learned the Tao of course [M: or is "ruled" by some non-physical LL or "damaged" by some unsecure attachment, it goes for the women too]) by his woman for two simple reasons: he is afraid he might not be able to satisfy her or he simply wants to go to sleep undisturbed. But when a man has learned how to regulate his emission [M: ... and both the man and the woman are free of their programming, traumas, etc?] he has no such fears and even when he wishes to go to sleep he can enjoy being touched and caressed to sleep. He might even make love a little (when you have learned the Tao, love-making is not strenuous any longer). And nearly any experienced woman will feel deeply that she seldom has enough loving/touching by her man. It is no exaggeration to say that this dissatisfaction drives many women to lesbianism18 and many more women turn their affections to their pet animals, who as a rule will always respond warmly to touching. Frequently women confess that they turn to their own sex because they feel only another woman can understand deeply this need for caressing. This is not always true of course. For by nature a man's need for loving/touching is just as great; the problem is that the overwhelming majority of men have never had an opportunity to learn adequately how to cope with the situation. An interesting example to explain this can be found in a man called Leautaud who is mentioned in this book.
When a man has learned the Tao he will enjoy infinitely more the loving/touching, for the reason that there is a very narrow boundary line between loving/touching and actually making love. But a man may not understand this completely until he has learned the Tao. A Tao of Loving adept not only enjoys much more, but he and his partner benefit from their loving as well.
This would mean that default language all people are born with is Physical touch, only later when all that baggage falls on our true selves, that first need morphs to whatever. Kind of what the G said that other centres are under influence of a sex centre.
In the context of romance novels, there were numerous examples of men and women who implemented various disguises to mask deeper issues and traumas, and that was reflected in their relationship and their love making.
I was kind of convinced that it would be easier if a couple had the same or similar LL, but now I´m questioning if that´s even a thing, or perhaps better way to put it: does it even matter? In the romances, once the couple is free of his/hers traumas, programming, beliefs, etc - it all falls into place and is reflected in their sex life.
I don´t know where exactly I´m going with this all, but I thought you guys might help in untangling it.
. My doctor told me some years ago I'm a remarkable person and since that he sends me to work when I'm sick. Lots of people told me that I have admirable character but nothing good comes out of it. For me, for my needs, for my care.
