Casmin Bui Week 13: What's Your Love Language?

Last weekend while I was finishing up on the POAS quotes about Norman Rockwell, my 22 year old sister was working in my room when she asked me a thoughtful question: What is your love language? Now you would think that’s just a harmless question just to spark conversation, but it felt more than that. That POAS assignment got delayed by an hour just because of how interesting answering that question was, and hearing my sister who is 6 years older than me, I was intrigued about how much we differed from each other. 

Credits: SimplyPsychology

Out of the 5 common categories that love language falls under (acts of service, quality time, words of affirmation, gift giving, and physical touch), each person usually favors one out of the 5, and it can also differ when you’re receiving or giving love. For me, I love spending time with my friends and family, and I always want to make time for them even if it is to my own detriment (as you can see from my POAS quote). I also found that I give my love through physical touch. Not to make it seem weird, but I love giving warm hugs or nudging my friends every now and then. When I had this question sprung up on me, I hadn’t really thought about why I did all these things. But hearing my sister’s response made a lot more sense. To my surprise, she was the polar opposite. She hated physical touch ever since she was a kid, and honestly even getting a hug from her is really rare (I’ve only ever hugged her twice in my 16 years). But why is that?

Turns out that sibling dynamics really can tell us about ourselves. I never really believed the videos that claimed “if you’re the younger sister, that means you’re spoiled and more sociable,” because every household is different. Everyone was raised in different environments by different parents… except for your sibling. So why were we basically polar opposites? 

As a kid, I was usually the center of attention as snobby as it sounds. If I wanted a snack, if I wanted to go outside, whenever I wanted to go somewhere, my parents were already one foot out the door. Growing up with a mom who especially loves physical touch such as playfighting or hugging, I lived around an environment that expressed love through touch. That certainly wasn’t the case for my sister. By the time I had become conscious, the 6 years of attention and care that my sister had received was short lasted, and thus she found her own ways to interpret love: through quality time. Learning from her friends in high school, she found that love was expressed through deep conversations and one-on-one interactions. Even after I grew out of being a total brat, my parents have always kept a close eye on me. Whether that would be for the better or worse, having that sort of attention all my life made an impact that I didn’t even notice. It’s like that spotlight has never really faded away. I guess I never really noticed how different me and my sister grew up despite being in the same household. 

I want you to ask yourself how you like to receive love and give love. You might just learn something new about yourself or someone else. 

In the words of the TxT (Tomorrow x Together), what’s your love language?

Comments

  1. Atharv DuaMarch 15, 2026 at 12:34 AM

    For some reason, it’s always the random questions that we ask to spark conversation that end up taking a decent amount of time to answer, and those are the questions that I personally find to lead to really refreshing conversations. I, like you, like giving love through physical touch (as weird as that sounds:) but I like receiving love through quality time (I wouldn’t know why if you asked me, I just somehow know that I do), and my sister is also the polar opposite! I think the key difference, though, is that my sister is the younger child in my specific case: she still hates physical touch, but she definitely likes receiving and giving love through quality time. I completely agree with your point that generalizations about a certain type of sibling cannot be accurate because we’re all raised differently (as demonstrated by looking at my sister and yours). It’s interesting, though, that everyone has a different love language, since we might interpret it differently when someone gives us love in our own love language than in theirs: this is probably why the people we feel know us best are the ones who communicate to us in our love language, and thus we’re able to build stronger relationships with them. In your writing, I think your use of an anecdote to set up your blog and the comparisons that take place in it (essentially setting yourself up as an example) is an effective way of reflecting on family dynamics and love languages, and your use of rhetorical questions invites the reader to kind of explore the topic alongside you (if that makes any sense) since we’re sort of answering the questions together, but in different ways since we all have different familial experiences and love languages. Thank you for an awesome piece!

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