The Emotional Bank Account is a concept in one of Sean Covey's books that I read as a teenager. Say you have 5 good friends. When you do positive things with your friend Stacy, that she registers as positive, your emotional balance with her increases - she feels happier about you. When you borrow Troy's bike and do a number on it before getting it back to him, he'll probably forgive you because your balance was good beforehand, but it's now less than it was before.
My good friend Wings has a practice of making regular small deposits in the EBAs closest to him. There were 8 of us who became very good friends, basically family, over the last long trip. But a lot of that was due to Wings. He would write a note to someone who was feeling low. He would fetch coffee for three or four people so that the conversation at the table could continue. He would take us on fantastic adventures in his breakfast cereal, or plan exciting adventures for our next weekend off (usually a month away), that included everyone and everyone's schedules. He had the discernment to recognize when someone was emotionally thrashed from some news back home, or frustrated with work, or just flat-out exhausted from going nine days on three hours of sleep a night, and he could tell when a joke would be good, or when kind words would be better. He once shared a magazine with me that had as its main article an event I was interested in trying next year, and he thought the Gentleman would enjoy it, too, as I was putting together a care package for him. And, all added up, yes it was probably a lot of work keeping track of everybody like that. But he felt that we were worth it, and we started to believe him.
And, interesting thing, Wings was the only friend from that circle of 8 that I was not once mad at or hurt by for the whole 8 months we were gone. His EBA was never low enough. And he almost never did anything that would register as "really big." Just small, quiet, and regular deposits.
This is a concept I need to learn. I say this very seriously. There was a time when my world was relationships and emotions, and I was governed by both as my key motivations. I didn’t care about accomplishments, really, unless I could see a direct correlation to how they would benefit a particular relationship I cared about.
Now, it’s the opposite. I’m sometimes spooked when I realize how much I’ve emotionally shut down, and how functional I tend to be about relationships. They still work, they “function,” after all, but the vivid emotions I used to exude everywhere rarely show. Some of that might be growing up. A good part of it, I know, is coping with the long trips away.
But it’s difficult to explain that these relationships matter to me. I know how to explain that they’re important for what needs to get done, but since I don’t often know how to articulate without sounding fake, and I CAN reasonably explain the logic from relationship to goal, well, it’s reasonable to assume that the part that I can explain is the main part that exists. So, I try to put it into action, since I can't get the words right. When I do something that's sort of like a caveman's approach to Valentine's Day - that's what just happened there. The thought was good, the wish to express it was good, the means of expressing it could probably use a bit of social tailoring.
It’s not a lost art, being human. I just have to relearn it. I did "human" for a long time, I am told, and haven’t been other-than for that long.
So, those means of expression are known rather widely as Love Languages. Very basic concept – some relationships, both people have a great amount of love for each other, but they feel like they’re sending out a lot and not receiving much, or any, back. Where I work, we would say that we’re transmitting on different frequencies – my primary piece of gear is one where the people receiving information HAVE to know in advance what channel will carry our information. They might be able to pick up someone else’s on another channel, or nothing at all, but sure as shooting they won’t get the info WE’RE putting out.
And this made brilliant sense to me, and explained a phenomenon. One of my closest friends and I have had a terrific misunderstanding about this one since we were small. I value touch, and one-on-one time. She feels trapped by touch, claustrophobic, and she likes to be efficient with her time and will communicate with the person in the room and another half-dozen people on her phone at the same time. So, the first one means that what I crave is actually threatening to her, and the second means that her style communicates to me that I don’t matter. It was a long time before we understood the amount of love that was coming in, and how frustrated the other person was over the messages not being received.
My friend Scooter is the only person I’ve seen nail my list on the first try.
Scooter’s a hoot, by the way – a clash in stereotypes. Actually, I find that most people are, once known beyond the surface level. But, in Scooter's case, she usually comes across as loud and crazy and kind of a ditz. This is because she is. She’s also incredibly perceptive and makes an excellent math-tutor, better than I do. (And I actually like math. I just, like, many people, don’t like feeling stupid, weak, or incompetent, and when I’m really struggling with a concept, that’s what I hear.)
Scooter is of an age with my sister, and I believe they went to school together, but she and I actually met working at Camp. Normally, one junior and one senior counselor will spend maybe two weeks of the summer living together, working with the same kids – we just rotate each week, and the result is that rarely are two people repeatedly paired together. But thanks to another assignment we both landed, we ended up spending 40% of that summer living together. There came a day when several of the women were sitting in the sun on the deck, our kids were all off playing a big soccer game, and we were talking about love languages.
The 5 basic love languages that author Gary Chapman describes are Gifts, Words of Affirmation, Touch, Acts of Kindness, and Quality Time. There’s variation – dialects, if you will – within each one. Dawn, for example, very much enjoys hugs, but isn’t much for snuggling. The idea is that, if you want to learn a person’s language, you observe them to see what seems to be dominant, and then focus from there, “Okay, she likes presents, but not expensive ones,” that sort of thing.
Scooter looked at me a moment, and then rattled off. “Time, Touch, Words*, Acts, Gifts.”
And I was dumbfounded. Even I buy into the idea that Scooter is a loud and zany ditz. But a ridiculously perceptive one. No one of my other friends had figured out more than two of those.
(*Words became less significant to me over the next few years - I started to express less, internalize more, and since I didn't use words as much, I didn't look for them as much.)
That gifts thing has been a real sore point. My friend Wolfe, that’s probably his primary, and his time is always so packed with assignments and meetings and projects that, as far as I can tell, he doesn’t see sharing it as an emotional thing. But that’s the one thing I always wanted from him – my Christmas present every year was a day where we just hung out and I didn’t have to share him with his phone or his half-a-dozen professional contacts. And I’m serious – it’s only one day a year that we did that. But, he would always be eager to show his affection by getting me very thoughtful presents – my favorite cd, from a band that not a lot of people knew I liked, was from him, and I played it for years. But gifts without time always made it feel like he was trying to buy me off.
There’s a point, though, when I WAS happy about gifts. When I realized that, it dawned on me that the languages spill in a kind of hierarchy – fill up the first pool, and then it spills over to the second.
I mean, by spending quality time with someone – not just being in the same room, although if we’re both quietly working on something, the mutual atmosphere is nice – it builds our relationship in my eyes. We might be sharing a project, or playing a game, or watching a movie and talking about it. Hiking’s good, canoeing and camping are GREAT, anything that involves challenging ourselves, working as a team, AND playing are great for this. Laughing together is great for building a sense of emotional closeness.
(Time where I have to be criticized is necessary for operations and goals. It is not quality time. I do not feel emotionally closer to my superiors after an hour of dressing-down, even though we did just spend an hour together.)
From spending time with a person, I can build a sense of trust, and figure out if I even WANT contact. Physical touch is actually really big for me, but I don’t want it from everybody. It used to be this constant flow-language when I was a teenager, just affirming, “Yes, I want you here. I’m glad you’re here.” Not necessarily, “I love you.” Just to be wanted, that the other person was happy. Not touching when the opportunity was there sometimes felt like a rejection. This was Camp, this was my home life, this was all of us band geeks. Camp we hug a LOT, or the girls will sit close enough to be in contact, or braid hair. Home is gentle and warm, and even when I knew I was in trouble for something I’d messed up, I knew home was a safe place to come back to. Band, sheesh, we had almost no boundaries. (I don’t recommend this today.) Used to be, someone would come into the music lounge, and find a pile of exhausted students sleeping on a sort of fort we’d make out of two couches. There'd be 9-12 people taking up two couches. No regard for gender, relationships, just the other students who were all on exhausting schedules and we had some downtime between classes. Also, it was always cold down there, shared body heat.
I moved to another state for a year when I was 20, and for the first time in my life, had no physical contact. It was really messing me up. It was just that I’d moved to a town where, really, I knew no one – the housing coordinator had my name with my face, and that was it. And our culture, strangers do not touch each other. Fortunately, I also had a Psych class my first semester, and among other things, we were required to keep a journal – my instructor noticed my response after we did an exercise involving training synapses, you had to squeeze the shoulder of the student next to you and see how long it took to make it around the group. Once I realized the problem there, I got involved with volunteering for the local animal shelter (when someone says, “Socializing cats,” this really just means that you sit in an accessible place in the room, and the cats that wish to be social may come to you, and the ones that don’t recognize that you are staying put and are no threat to them. I was once sitting in a pile of eleven black cats.), and started working for an area daycare. 4-year-olds don’t care who you are, haven’t learned that we don’t touch strangers – if you’re generally nice, always want to play with them, and have no problem with being used as a climbing tree, you’re going to get a lot of little people hugging and clambering over you.
Then I REALLY left home, to a place where personal boundaries are INTENSE. But this is getting long-winded, so I’ll move on.
The thing with acts of kindness is that, if a person hasn’t already shared time with me, I don’t recognize it as kindness – I feel like they want something from me. I’m one of a few women in a mostly-male work environment, which is where I spend most of my time, so when someone does something nice for me, that clearly cost them something, I’m usually suspicious of what they really want. When it’s one of my friends who spends time with me and I already KNOW their motives, then it makes me happy and I exclaim over them and praise them.
Same thing with words. Words are there to clarify WHY the acts or the touch happens. I don’t need clarification on a person spending time with me, unless they seem to not enjoy it. If I hear a lot of nice words, but they come before the other languages, it always sounds like they’re trying to make me like them without liking me enough to want to put some effort into it. Words are easy to make. But, they are very useful – for example, my love got me an absolutely beautiful Buck knife as my birthday present this year, but I wouldn’t have understood why he got it until he explained its significance, the time it took him to pick it out and get it customized, and took the time to teach me how to use it more safely and care for the blade.
So, on that note, I do accept and appreciate gifts…as the last language. When we’ve shared time, laughs, and stories, when I’m comfortable enough with you to enjoy physical contact*, and I know through your words what’s going on in your head when we share these things…well, actually, I’ll still mostly prefer gifts that are either acts (I really go crazy when people do nice things for me, and I’ll see that as a gift) or some form of time spent together.
*Thanks to other factors, the only males I’m really comfortable hugging are either my Dad, my love, or under the age of ten.
For example, my high school best friend is a very gentle-natured minimalist, who doesn’t like to accumulate possessions. When she makes something, she gives it away if she likes it, throws it away if she doesn’t. To give her something for her birthday, she will smile kindly and prattle over how pretty it is – less than six months will go by before she’s found some way to get it out of her house again. But, a good gift for her is something like a season pass to our local ice rink – something that enables us to spend time together on something she very much enjoys. I like gifts like that.
But, yes, it’s true, if I’m filled to the brim on every other area of love, then when a person gets me a well-thought-out gift, it completes the picture.
This is not to say that everyone must capitulate to my love languages. That would not be a loving statement. Rather the opposite – it’s on me to learn those of the people I wish to show love to. But some people have been trying to figure out what I'm understanding, so maybe explaining it out like this would help a bit.
My good friend Wings has a practice of making regular small deposits in the EBAs closest to him. There were 8 of us who became very good friends, basically family, over the last long trip. But a lot of that was due to Wings. He would write a note to someone who was feeling low. He would fetch coffee for three or four people so that the conversation at the table could continue. He would take us on fantastic adventures in his breakfast cereal, or plan exciting adventures for our next weekend off (usually a month away), that included everyone and everyone's schedules. He had the discernment to recognize when someone was emotionally thrashed from some news back home, or frustrated with work, or just flat-out exhausted from going nine days on three hours of sleep a night, and he could tell when a joke would be good, or when kind words would be better. He once shared a magazine with me that had as its main article an event I was interested in trying next year, and he thought the Gentleman would enjoy it, too, as I was putting together a care package for him. And, all added up, yes it was probably a lot of work keeping track of everybody like that. But he felt that we were worth it, and we started to believe him.
And, interesting thing, Wings was the only friend from that circle of 8 that I was not once mad at or hurt by for the whole 8 months we were gone. His EBA was never low enough. And he almost never did anything that would register as "really big." Just small, quiet, and regular deposits.
This is a concept I need to learn. I say this very seriously. There was a time when my world was relationships and emotions, and I was governed by both as my key motivations. I didn’t care about accomplishments, really, unless I could see a direct correlation to how they would benefit a particular relationship I cared about.
Now, it’s the opposite. I’m sometimes spooked when I realize how much I’ve emotionally shut down, and how functional I tend to be about relationships. They still work, they “function,” after all, but the vivid emotions I used to exude everywhere rarely show. Some of that might be growing up. A good part of it, I know, is coping with the long trips away.
But it’s difficult to explain that these relationships matter to me. I know how to explain that they’re important for what needs to get done, but since I don’t often know how to articulate without sounding fake, and I CAN reasonably explain the logic from relationship to goal, well, it’s reasonable to assume that the part that I can explain is the main part that exists. So, I try to put it into action, since I can't get the words right. When I do something that's sort of like a caveman's approach to Valentine's Day - that's what just happened there. The thought was good, the wish to express it was good, the means of expressing it could probably use a bit of social tailoring.
It’s not a lost art, being human. I just have to relearn it. I did "human" for a long time, I am told, and haven’t been other-than for that long.
So, those means of expression are known rather widely as Love Languages. Very basic concept – some relationships, both people have a great amount of love for each other, but they feel like they’re sending out a lot and not receiving much, or any, back. Where I work, we would say that we’re transmitting on different frequencies – my primary piece of gear is one where the people receiving information HAVE to know in advance what channel will carry our information. They might be able to pick up someone else’s on another channel, or nothing at all, but sure as shooting they won’t get the info WE’RE putting out.
And this made brilliant sense to me, and explained a phenomenon. One of my closest friends and I have had a terrific misunderstanding about this one since we were small. I value touch, and one-on-one time. She feels trapped by touch, claustrophobic, and she likes to be efficient with her time and will communicate with the person in the room and another half-dozen people on her phone at the same time. So, the first one means that what I crave is actually threatening to her, and the second means that her style communicates to me that I don’t matter. It was a long time before we understood the amount of love that was coming in, and how frustrated the other person was over the messages not being received.
My friend Scooter is the only person I’ve seen nail my list on the first try.
Scooter’s a hoot, by the way – a clash in stereotypes. Actually, I find that most people are, once known beyond the surface level. But, in Scooter's case, she usually comes across as loud and crazy and kind of a ditz. This is because she is. She’s also incredibly perceptive and makes an excellent math-tutor, better than I do. (And I actually like math. I just, like, many people, don’t like feeling stupid, weak, or incompetent, and when I’m really struggling with a concept, that’s what I hear.)
Scooter is of an age with my sister, and I believe they went to school together, but she and I actually met working at Camp. Normally, one junior and one senior counselor will spend maybe two weeks of the summer living together, working with the same kids – we just rotate each week, and the result is that rarely are two people repeatedly paired together. But thanks to another assignment we both landed, we ended up spending 40% of that summer living together. There came a day when several of the women were sitting in the sun on the deck, our kids were all off playing a big soccer game, and we were talking about love languages.
The 5 basic love languages that author Gary Chapman describes are Gifts, Words of Affirmation, Touch, Acts of Kindness, and Quality Time. There’s variation – dialects, if you will – within each one. Dawn, for example, very much enjoys hugs, but isn’t much for snuggling. The idea is that, if you want to learn a person’s language, you observe them to see what seems to be dominant, and then focus from there, “Okay, she likes presents, but not expensive ones,” that sort of thing.
Scooter looked at me a moment, and then rattled off. “Time, Touch, Words*, Acts, Gifts.”
And I was dumbfounded. Even I buy into the idea that Scooter is a loud and zany ditz. But a ridiculously perceptive one. No one of my other friends had figured out more than two of those.
(*Words became less significant to me over the next few years - I started to express less, internalize more, and since I didn't use words as much, I didn't look for them as much.)
That gifts thing has been a real sore point. My friend Wolfe, that’s probably his primary, and his time is always so packed with assignments and meetings and projects that, as far as I can tell, he doesn’t see sharing it as an emotional thing. But that’s the one thing I always wanted from him – my Christmas present every year was a day where we just hung out and I didn’t have to share him with his phone or his half-a-dozen professional contacts. And I’m serious – it’s only one day a year that we did that. But, he would always be eager to show his affection by getting me very thoughtful presents – my favorite cd, from a band that not a lot of people knew I liked, was from him, and I played it for years. But gifts without time always made it feel like he was trying to buy me off.
There’s a point, though, when I WAS happy about gifts. When I realized that, it dawned on me that the languages spill in a kind of hierarchy – fill up the first pool, and then it spills over to the second.
I mean, by spending quality time with someone – not just being in the same room, although if we’re both quietly working on something, the mutual atmosphere is nice – it builds our relationship in my eyes. We might be sharing a project, or playing a game, or watching a movie and talking about it. Hiking’s good, canoeing and camping are GREAT, anything that involves challenging ourselves, working as a team, AND playing are great for this. Laughing together is great for building a sense of emotional closeness.
(Time where I have to be criticized is necessary for operations and goals. It is not quality time. I do not feel emotionally closer to my superiors after an hour of dressing-down, even though we did just spend an hour together.)
From spending time with a person, I can build a sense of trust, and figure out if I even WANT contact. Physical touch is actually really big for me, but I don’t want it from everybody. It used to be this constant flow-language when I was a teenager, just affirming, “Yes, I want you here. I’m glad you’re here.” Not necessarily, “I love you.” Just to be wanted, that the other person was happy. Not touching when the opportunity was there sometimes felt like a rejection. This was Camp, this was my home life, this was all of us band geeks. Camp we hug a LOT, or the girls will sit close enough to be in contact, or braid hair. Home is gentle and warm, and even when I knew I was in trouble for something I’d messed up, I knew home was a safe place to come back to. Band, sheesh, we had almost no boundaries. (I don’t recommend this today.) Used to be, someone would come into the music lounge, and find a pile of exhausted students sleeping on a sort of fort we’d make out of two couches. There'd be 9-12 people taking up two couches. No regard for gender, relationships, just the other students who were all on exhausting schedules and we had some downtime between classes. Also, it was always cold down there, shared body heat.
I moved to another state for a year when I was 20, and for the first time in my life, had no physical contact. It was really messing me up. It was just that I’d moved to a town where, really, I knew no one – the housing coordinator had my name with my face, and that was it. And our culture, strangers do not touch each other. Fortunately, I also had a Psych class my first semester, and among other things, we were required to keep a journal – my instructor noticed my response after we did an exercise involving training synapses, you had to squeeze the shoulder of the student next to you and see how long it took to make it around the group. Once I realized the problem there, I got involved with volunteering for the local animal shelter (when someone says, “Socializing cats,” this really just means that you sit in an accessible place in the room, and the cats that wish to be social may come to you, and the ones that don’t recognize that you are staying put and are no threat to them. I was once sitting in a pile of eleven black cats.), and started working for an area daycare. 4-year-olds don’t care who you are, haven’t learned that we don’t touch strangers – if you’re generally nice, always want to play with them, and have no problem with being used as a climbing tree, you’re going to get a lot of little people hugging and clambering over you.
Then I REALLY left home, to a place where personal boundaries are INTENSE. But this is getting long-winded, so I’ll move on.
The thing with acts of kindness is that, if a person hasn’t already shared time with me, I don’t recognize it as kindness – I feel like they want something from me. I’m one of a few women in a mostly-male work environment, which is where I spend most of my time, so when someone does something nice for me, that clearly cost them something, I’m usually suspicious of what they really want. When it’s one of my friends who spends time with me and I already KNOW their motives, then it makes me happy and I exclaim over them and praise them.
Same thing with words. Words are there to clarify WHY the acts or the touch happens. I don’t need clarification on a person spending time with me, unless they seem to not enjoy it. If I hear a lot of nice words, but they come before the other languages, it always sounds like they’re trying to make me like them without liking me enough to want to put some effort into it. Words are easy to make. But, they are very useful – for example, my love got me an absolutely beautiful Buck knife as my birthday present this year, but I wouldn’t have understood why he got it until he explained its significance, the time it took him to pick it out and get it customized, and took the time to teach me how to use it more safely and care for the blade.
So, on that note, I do accept and appreciate gifts…as the last language. When we’ve shared time, laughs, and stories, when I’m comfortable enough with you to enjoy physical contact*, and I know through your words what’s going on in your head when we share these things…well, actually, I’ll still mostly prefer gifts that are either acts (I really go crazy when people do nice things for me, and I’ll see that as a gift) or some form of time spent together.
*Thanks to other factors, the only males I’m really comfortable hugging are either my Dad, my love, or under the age of ten.
For example, my high school best friend is a very gentle-natured minimalist, who doesn’t like to accumulate possessions. When she makes something, she gives it away if she likes it, throws it away if she doesn’t. To give her something for her birthday, she will smile kindly and prattle over how pretty it is – less than six months will go by before she’s found some way to get it out of her house again. But, a good gift for her is something like a season pass to our local ice rink – something that enables us to spend time together on something she very much enjoys. I like gifts like that.
But, yes, it’s true, if I’m filled to the brim on every other area of love, then when a person gets me a well-thought-out gift, it completes the picture.
This is not to say that everyone must capitulate to my love languages. That would not be a loving statement. Rather the opposite – it’s on me to learn those of the people I wish to show love to. But some people have been trying to figure out what I'm understanding, so maybe explaining it out like this would help a bit.
