Last week I asked you to take a quick quiz; thanks to all of you who did so. The idea came from a conversation Tad and I had when he told me he had bloggers figured out. "I bet most bloggers' main love language is 'words of affirmation', and if they're married, their spouse's is something else." The man has known me for almost 25 years, he knows what a word of encouragement will do. He reads your comments, so I guess he was just generalizing and drawing conclusions based on what he knew about me. I thought it was an interesting idea, so, what better way to find out than to ask y'all?

Based on your feedback, he was more wrong than right, though. Hardly a large enough sample to draw real conclusions, here are your results: (PENSIEVE) Bloggers' primary or secondary love language was split equally between "Words of Affirmation" and "Acts of Service", both at 30%. "Quality Time" came in third at about 22%. As far as your spouses are concerned (and much fewer of those were given), their main love languages are split also evenly, but between "Acts of Service" and "Quality Time"; "Physical Touch" came in a close third.

Particularly for those who have never heard of them, this 30-second assessment is almost a disservice to Gary Smalley's book which delves into the languages much more deeply. When we went through a study together years ago, learning what speaks love to Tad, and for him, what speaks love to me was revolutionary in our communication with each other. In other words, I could tell him repeatedly how much I loved him, send him cards or emails, or offer general words of encouragement, and it would do little to make him feel loved. B u t, ah....program the coffee maker so it's brewing when he gets up at 5:30 a.m. (and I'm still snoozing) or iron his shirts (which he KNOWS I HATE to do because I'm slow AND bad at it) or put away the clean dishes after I washed them (because, growing up, we left them on the counter 'til the next day, and that's just fine with me, but drives him nuts), and he feels loved. Conversely, he can wash three loads of laundry or clean out my car and I barely notice...BUT send me a two-line email or spicy text message and I'm floating six inches off the floor. It doesn't take many "words" when they're spoken in "our" language.

Contrary to Willowtree's accusation, I was not trying to capture blog traffic with that question (smack smack). But, hey, he's given me an idea for my next post, so I need to thank him...goodness knows, I've done my share of "inspiring" him, most of the time, unwittingly.