As the fifth week of classes rolled around and my professors decided they had spent enough time pretending to be nice and then burdened me with work, all I wanted was to feel loved and taken care of by those around me — my friends. Yet, as I started to spiral, I got it into my head that my friends didn’t love me as much, and I wasn’t as special and shiny as I once was. My love language is words of affirmation, and at times when I didn’t hear the “thank you for planning our trip” or “I really like the outfit you put together after hours of work at 8 a.m.,” I felt underappreciated and taken for granted. 

As I kept thinking about it, my brain, too, went into overdrive, and my rational, only slightly crazy side barely beat my irrational, overthinking side — much like many close USC football games that didn’t go our way. You can establish a love language with a romantic partner, but you can’t run behind every friend handing them an instruction manual titled “How to Love Me.” And even if I were to train my friends to show their love a certain way, I’m not sure how fair that would be. Naturally, everyone has a different way of showing love, and putting these restrictions on friendships — where people should be free to act the way they want to — doesn’t seem right. 

Establishing love languages can be a helpful starting point, but I often find them too emotionally rigid. Love, and especially platonic love, is so complex, with a series of emotions and expressions that you can’t squeeze in these five generic boxes — as if it’s a multiple-choice question with only one correct answer. Having one primary love language disregards how everyone can have multiple nuanced ways of giving and receiving love that don’t align with that category but can be equally impactful.

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Maybe my friends weren’t showing their care the hyper-specific way I wanted them to, but that didn’t mean they didn’t care at all. They just had different ways of expressing themselves and the moment I stopped being so laser focused and opened my eyes to other forms of expressing concern, I found ample signs that I had some amazing people to count on. 

My friends don’t use their words as much, but show their love by buying me my favorite chocolate on a random Wednesday, texting me right after fall break about spring break because they know I am a planner and have thousands of ideas already or staying up with me the night before my midterm to quiz me for a class they took the semester before. 

While none of these may be my preferred method of being loved, they are still extremely meaningful, and I wouldn’t know them if I hadn’t been open to experiencing them and appreciating my friends for what they were rather than moping about what they weren’t. I was being unfair to them by sticking to my expectations and overlooking their expressions.

I’m not advocating for not talking to your friends about your feelings and how you want to be cared for, but I don’t think having different love languages should be a deal breaker or even a focal point of one’s friendship. 

The most meaningful friendships are those where people are free to express themselves according to their liking and still be accepted for that. When we stop focusing on fitting love languages in these rigid categories and appreciate how they exist across a spectrum, that’s when we can appreciate those little moments of care. It’s not about showing love the “right way,” but rather about appreciating it in all shapes and forms, even if it looks different from what we expected. 

Edhita Singhal is a junior writing about life lessons she has learned in college in her column, “Thinking Out Loud,” which runs every other Wednesday.