

Why is it important to understand our friend’s love language? You can take the 5 Love Languages Quiz, and pass the link along to your friend to get a better idea of what matters most to each of you. If in-your-feelings convos aren’t your thing, there’s a quiz for that. Avoiding these conversations can end up causing tension in your friendships. You don’t have to speak the same love language as your friend, you just have to make space for each of you to be heard and understood. “If you’re not getting your needs met or you’re not sure what the needs are that your friend wants, talk about it,” Sbordone says.

Sbordone, LCSW, says she gets some eye rolls when she tells her clients the importance of communication in friendships, but she stands by it. How do you learn your friend’s love language?Ĭommunication-and I can’t stress this enough-is key.
#Love language quiz for kids how to#
Talking about our respective needs and the areas where we weren’t feeling the love helped Helen and me understand how to be better friends to one another. I wasn’t being as present when we spent time together and that was hurtful to her as someone who really values the time that we do have together. And for Helen, who is also a quality time kind of girl, it wasn’t as much about the amount of time we spent together as it was about how intentional that time was. Not hearing the words, “Congrats,” or “I’m proud of you” from Helen on big days was hurtful to me, even if we hung out later that night.
#Love language quiz for kids free#
Though quality time is usually what matters most to me, words of affirmation had taken priority because my free time was so restricted. “This is where I think a lot of friendships break down, especially as we get older and you’ve gone through transitions and moving and basically life events, relationships breakdown because we’re not talking about these needs,” Sbordone says.

According to Nicole Sbordone, therapist and author of Surviving Female Friendships: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, that’s the most important thing to do. We just weren’t speaking the same language anymore, and our needs as friends weren’t being met. I thought Helen and I were spending plenty of time together, but she felt I wasn’t making time for her. And we stopped supporting each other’s projects as much as we did before. We started getting more argumentative and short with each other.

I was busier with school than I had ever been and Helen was grappling with the stress and anxiety of picturing life after graduation. So when things started feeling off toward the end of our senior year, it was hard to figure out exactly what was going on. Her favorite artist is Beyonce, mine is Solange. She loves to cook for friends, I love to eat family-style meals. Our friendship has always just made sense. But as friends, we made space (even when there didn’t appear to be any) for both of us to fully be ourselves, whether that meant talking over episodes of Broad City, spending hours getting ready to go out together, and then ultimately, showing up late and overdressed. We had both felt a bit stifled in the environment where we were living and going to school. We became really close really fast the summer before our senior year of college. Thinking about love languages became really important for my friend Helen and me.
