Compliments and Cambry

There are five "love languages" or different ways people feel and express love:

1. Quality Time
2. Words of Affirmation
3. Service
4. Physical Touch
5. Gifts

Everyone has a "primary love language" that makes them feel loved. The other four are nice, but without regular manifestations of their primary language they feel used, not loved.

My primary love language is Words of Affirmation. Words, if they're positive, have the power to make my day. Negative words crush me much more than they should. Compliments make my day.

However, compliments are kind of particular when it comes to me and how I receive them:

• They have to be sincere, otherwise I disregard them (and likely ones that come in the future).
• They have to be legitimate (not "you're voice isn't too shabby").
• They have to be something that won't affect my future performance because I feel pressure (i.e., when my band director compliments me on how I nailed a certain part I freeze up on that part forevermore because I get nervous).
• They have to be spontaneous (you notice something and say something, you don't pull a Mr. Collins and think about possible compliments to give days beforehand).
• And you have to actually vocalize them (or put them in a note. Notes are good).

So when someone tells me that I have a beautiful smile I want to smile more. Sometimes I'll even laugh happily to myself. That's happened to me a bunch lately and it makes me so happy, so much more willing to smile at people I may not know. Like I said. Compliments, when given correctly, make my day. And I give compliments all the time even though not everyone receives them the way I do. They just make me happy.