Students discovered how they communicate love at a relationships workshop Tuesday evening.
Residential Life hosted “Healthy Relationships Workshop: Love Languages” with Wazo Connect, a student-run mental health mentorship program, to help students learn about how they communicate love. Marieka Turner, Residential Life health and well-being coordinator, said she collaborated with Wazo Connect in order to involve more students in organizing and running the workshop.
Turner, the workshop’s primary presenter, said the concept of love languages was developed by marriage counselor Gary Chapman in his book “The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts.” The love languages consist of acts of service, quality time, receiving gifts, words of affirmation and physical touch.
Turner said she wanted to help students understand how to build healthy relationships using their knowledge of love languages.
“I feel like love language is such a buzzword. … I really wanted to give students the ability to further unpack not just their love language but how they can better communicate and build relationships with people who may have a different love language than them,” Turner said. “It’s a way to start building the conversation about healthy relationships.”
Workshop participants were given time to take a quiz online, which ranked their preferred love languages from most to least favored. Participants then discussed their results in groups facilitated by members of Wazo Connect.
Ana Saechao, a second-year business economics student, said discovering that acts of service was her highest-ranked language allowed her to better understand how her family communicates with one another.
“In my family, we don’t just say ‘I love you,’ we say ‘Let me help you,’” Saechao said.
Isabel Payne, a third-year sociology student, found that one of her least preferred love languages, receiving gifts, stemmed from her personality.
“I’m a nonmaterialist, minimalist person,” Payne said. “I feel like things should be spoken rather than expressed.”
Following the discussion, students participated in activities about their two least preferred love languages. For instance, participants who learned receiving gifts was one of their least preferred languages had to write a thank you note to the person who gave them the best gift they had ever received.
These activities aimed to teach participants how to connect with those who may not have the same love language, said Noam Grebler, a Wazo Connect co-founder.
Some students said they attended the event to learn more about healthy relationships between friends and thought the event was engaging.
Celeste Ramirez, a third-year history student, said the event helped her explore her relationships with her friends and thought the event helped show how similar her and her friends’ love languages were.
“I’m all into healthy relationships,” Ramirez said.
Payne, who came to the workshop with Ramirez, said that she found the discourse that stems from examining love languages intriguing.
Turner said two more relationship events similar to this workshop will be taking place in February.