The Dishwasher Is Not a Love Language
Dishwasher politics are real. I should know.
My ex would lose his mind if I set the dishwasher going when it looked more like a suggestion than a full load. This was not about saving water. It was not about the cost of dishwasher tablets, although can we talk about that for a moment? Those companies have absolutely cornered the market. One tab costs about $5. For soap. WTAF.
Anyway.
When he was out, I would sometimes run the dishwasher with six dishes in it. Not because I am spiteful. But because other people’s rigidity, especially when it comes without a rationale, activates my little insurgent kitchen gremlin. If you can’t explain the rule, I’m going to test it.
Dishwashers expose relationship dynamics faster than therapy.
Take my parents.
My father is an engineer. He has not heard of rinse aid. My mother, on the other hand, does not “stack” the dishwasher. She throws utensils and cutlery at it. When you open the top tray, it looks like an astronaut surgeon hurled space junk onto a solar panel just to see what would happen.
Once I said, “Mum, what the….?”
She replied, very calmly, “Oh, your father always rearranges it.”
This is unadulterated boomer devotion. No millennial relationship would tolerate that.
First of all, I’m not convinced we are designed to cohabit with romantic partners. It costs far too much in therapy to process dishwasher politics alone. Romantic relationships are designed for attachment, attunement, fun, security, and hot sex. Dishwashers interfere with at least three of those.
But this is not a rant about whether we should be living together. That’s a different blog post.
This is about Gary. Again.
You know Gary. Pastor Gary. The man who gave us “love languages.”
For those who haven’t met him, Gary Chapman proposed that we each have a primary way of giving and receiving love, and relationships get wobbly when partners don’t “speak” each other’s language.
The five love languages are:
Words of affirmation
Quality time
Acts of service
Physical touch
Gifts
If you can afford gifts in this economy, congratulations.
Now here’s the thing.
Love languages are not cute personality quizzes for me. They are diagnostic tools.
If someone tells me their way of showing love is acts of service, I am probably going to assume one of two things: they lean avoidant in their attachment style, or they’re a man. Possibly both.
If someone tells me their love language is words of affirmation, I’m going to assume they lean more anxious. Either that’s their baseline, or they’re partnered with someone avoidant and they are starving. They are hungry for reassurance. They’re more likely to be female, but not always.
Here’s what we need to get clear about.
We cannot swap acts of service for physical affection.
Acts of service are part of being in a relationship, especially if you live together. That’s not romance. That’s logistics.
Spending time together is not a love language either. If you live apart, time is the relationship. If you live together, time is inevitable. Quality time is lovely, but it is not revolutionary. It is baseline.
Men often feel more comfortable with acts of service because actions feel safer than words. Using your body to demonstrate commitment feels less vulnerable than saying, “I love you,” offering compliments, validating feelings, or speaking tenderly. And vulnerability is not something men, broadly speaking, are socialised to enjoy.
People with avoidant attachment styles are brilliant at acts of service. They will fix your car, pick up your dry cleaning, and reorganise the pantry alphabetically. Because intimacy is terrifying.
Intimacy requires vulnerability. It requires talking about feelings. It requires attuned responses when your partner talks about theirs. It requires tolerating the sensation of needing someone, and being needed in return. Obligation can feel as threatening as closeness.
So instead of physical affection or emotional intimacy, they do cute things. Useful things. Practical things.
If your partner is not loving you in your “love language,” the solution is not to say, “My love language is words of affirmation. Please comply.”
A better conversation is: what would help you feel safer offering that?
For some people, physical or verbal affection is easier when it is self-directed, not in response to pressure. They may struggle in the moment but do well when they initiate on their own terms.
In those cases, I encourage notes. Text messages. Emails. Voice notes. Words delivered at a slight distance can feel less vulnerable than face to face eye contact and an exposed nervous system.
Environmental cues help too. Reminders to reach out, to touch, to say something kind.
If you grew up in a family where affection was absent, intrusive, or inconsistent, your nervous system does not have a blueprint for safe proximity. You may avoid affection because it feels suffocating. Or it simply may not occur to you to say sweet things or initiate touch. Not because you don’t care. But because your body does not associate closeness with safety. It is extremely difficult to manufacture a new nervous system in adulthood that suddenly craves proximity. How we were loved as children shapes how we feel safe giving and receiving love as adults.
For many men (and women) who did not grow up in verbally or physically affectionate homes, becoming emotionally forthcoming in marriage is not automatic. That is not something to punish or meet with exasperation.
There are ways to build tolerance for intimacy over time. To stretch the nervous system. To make proximity feel less threatening.
Which brings us back to Gary.
Love languages should be read as clues.
And sometimes, unpacking the dishwasher every morning is not an act of devotion. It’s may be a human who would rather stack plates than say, “I need you.”
These are just a few ways we can rethink love languages. And maybe, while we’re at it, rethink the dishwasher.
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