By: Camden Baucke MS LLP
In the third part of our series Debunking Love Languages, I’m taking on Acts of Service.
This love language often seems the most benign from the outside.
However, like other love languages, it’s constantly riddled with problematic dynamics.
Helping becomes more than just an act of kindness – it transforms into language used in a conversation you might not even know you’re having.
Do you pay your debts with acts of service? Are you ungrateful if you don’t speak someone’s acts of service language? Who are acts of service actually for?
We’ll answer these questions in today’s article, but we need to briefly revisit why love languages are problematic in the first place.
Problems with Love Languages
#1 – They Limit Love
If you claim only one or two love languages as your love languages, you are both limiting what types of love you can give and what types of love you can receive. It may feel like fingerprints when actually it’s self-made shackles – trapping you in something you might be convinced is predetermined.
#2 – Who’s the Language For?
Whenever you speak, who are you talking for? Are you choosing to express yourself or are you wanting your audience to receive a certain message? You can express your love language like if you were speaking English, but if your listener only knows Hungarian, there’s no conversation. If you limit yourself to a certain language, it muddles the purpose – is communication for you or others?
#3 – Learned Love From Bad Places
We often learn our love languages, and depending on the quality of the places we learn it, we can learn all the wrong lessons. Restricting your love languages to what’s “normal” might be imprisoning yourself to something that’s problematic or hurtful, but it might feel like “yours“.
What are Acts of Service?
Acts of service is another love language – defined by physical and thoughtful gestures.
This could be bringing your partner a coffee in the morning, cooking dinner at night, or saying “I love you” everyday as they head off to work.
At first glance, that doesn’t sound too bad does it?
By all rights, these are just considered random acts of kindness.
Random is an important descriptor, because it indicates that someone’s service is not conditional – there’s no requirement needed to be met to be loved.
Kindness is also another important aspect, because even the word itself goes back to Proto-Germanic meaning “native or family” – treating others with family or family-like affection.
Random acts of kindness and acts of service, at face value, are wonderful things to do for someone.
However, behind all behaviors is motivation – and not all acts of service, or even kindness, are done with benevolence in mind.
Issues with Acts of Service
While all love languages attempt to specify how love is communicated, it can unintentionally limit relationships and hide malevolent intentions under the guise of just being “who you are“.
Selfish Motivations
Behind every behavior is the driving factor of “why“.
You can take the same act of service, give it two different motivations, and you have two completely separate events.
For example, imagine you do pick up coffee for your partner in the morning – but your motivation is to see the happy smile on their face when they take their first sip. This would be altruistic.
On the other hand, if you give your partner that same coffee, but mentally add it to your list of things you’ve done for them so you can weaponize it in your next argument – that is no longer altruistic or even about your partner.
Or later down the road you might ask your partner to do something that they don’t want to, but you now have your act of service to hold over their heads until they comply.
So, acts of service is not always for the purpose of kindness – but often for control and compensation.
You can even make someone retroactively earn a random act of kindness – completely defeating the point.
Only for the Giver
If acts of service are only for the giver, it defeats the purpose.
That’s why limiting yourself to acts of service is already a step in the wrong direction.
If that’s all you can give, that’s often only a small percentage of what’s needed to sustain healthy relationships.
To be clear, there is always a self-satisfactory aspect of giving – just like the joy of seeing your partner enjoy the coffee you got them.
However, when giving becomes more about the giver than the gifted, it becomes unhealthily selfish.
Only the Receiver
What happens when acts of service are your love language, but people in your life don’t speak it?
Like the love language of gifts – it requires a certain resource. Instead of money, acts of service require time and energy.
For many of us, these resources are in short supply these days. A mother who works full time might not have the time or energy to speak in the love language of acts of service – but that does not mean she isn’t loving.
Dead-set acts of service givers limit the love they provide, and dead-set receivers limit the love they receive.
Even then, receiving acts of service might become an expectation of love rather than a voluntary expression.
Martyrdom & Control
The difference between random acts of kindness and martyrdom is control.
Martyrdom, in a non-religious context, means acting in a self-serving way that is disguised as helping others.
In social scenarios, martyrdom is confusing. Someone might be nice, but something feels off – as if a pressure accompanies a seemingly innocent act of kindness.
If you’re the one asking for acts of kindness, this can be a thin veil for demanding someone to tackle obligatory tasks.
Acts of service are like gifts, just with gestures – they can easily become tools for control or causes for martyrdom.
If you’re giving, it can make something that’s seemingly about others all about yourself.
Or if you’re receiving, you get something that’s seemingly for you, but is actually for the giver.
That’s why acts of service can be selfishly demanded or self-destructively given.
If you don’t want to be a martyr, or invite martyrs into your life, but you still want kindness, what do you do?
Authentic Kindness
Random acts of kindness, freely given for the purpose of the receiver, can be wonderful.
When the behavior matches the motivation, it becomes authentic – a good action with a good purpose.
However, acts of random kindness is less of a language and more of an approach to living.
A true act of kindness could be receiving or giving any of the other love languages, so why should we delineate and limit ourselves and others?
Notice Manipulation & Clarify Motivation
My final thoughts on this love language is that a beautiful thing is trapped inside a commonly manipulated idea.
Acts of Service should be voluntary and come with no strings attached.
If you notice yourself being shamed, controlled, or guilted afterwards, recognize this as conditional love – where you must earn the love you were just given.
That feeling of being controlled is often indicative of a purpose to control – a motivation spawned from selfish ambition rather than altruism and kindness.
How you serve others might differ by culture and nationality, but love isn’t limited to a language.
Reflections 
Leave a comment