Sam Keen writes: "Different types of people express love in different ways. The native tongue of love may be: sharing ideas, fixing the washer, sending roses, listening, touching, or providing money for college. There are long- distance and short-distance lovers, those who thrive on solitude and occasional closeness and those who love best when they are engulfed in wall-to-wall intimacy. There are celibate lovers and those who are outrageously carnal, passionate intellectuals and great sensualists. Persons who approach the world primarily through thinking and analysis will express love in a different way from those for whom sensing and feeling are prime. Introverts and extroverts, receptive and aggressive individuals, will naturally specialize in different elements of love. How much duller the diamond would be without its many facets."

I wish I had known this about twenty years ago. So many of us are socialized and experience love in fairly narrow terms growing up and when our partners or mates don't live up to our particular expectation of what love should look like, as we have come to understand it, than we are often prone to feeling hurt and rejected. Love is bigger than any individual imagination and as we grow in our understanding of how love can potentially be expressed is so many ways than our gratitude will expand towards God, ourselves, and our partners.