Buck’s Love Language and the difference between Taylor and Eddie understanding it:
As we all know, Buck’s main love language can be seen as Words of Affirmation. This is how he tends to understand love, since he lacked it so much growing up. His parents were never very verbal with their love, but Maddie was. So in order for Buck to understand whether or not he means something to someone, he needs them to verbally tell him that. We have seen many instances where he doubts himself and gets all up in his head. Yes he has taken to physical intimacy to fill that void he has, but he uses physical touch as a placeholder, since he never had the words to go by. Why am I mentioning this? Because let’s take a look at his relationship with Taylor and with Eddie separately.
His relationship with Taylor is based on the foundation of sexual attraction and intimacy. They started off having sex and never really learned how to be friends. They then jumped into a relationship thinking its what they both want. As we have seen, Taylor isn’t the greatest with her words. She has called Buck “needy”, “a bad friend” and given him bad advice, such as “Maybe you might want to consider not everything is about you.” Obviously, to Buck, he’s going to internalize that and focus on her words because he takes to words more than other things, such as actions or touch. Given what she told him, you can see in Buck’s facial expression that it wasn’t the greatest advice and he didn’t like what she said to him. But it resonated with him and gave him mixed feelings on whether or not the problem with Chimney was about him. He already has issues about not fitting in and being left behind, issues about being insecure, so for her to say that to him? I’m sure it led him to believe that he’s really not important enough so he should take himself out of the situation (transfer from the 118) so that everyone else would be happier.
Then, when he came home and she had laid out that breakfast for him, we all sensed the weird vibe going on. She tried to do something “nice” for him and when he admitted to her that he clearly didn’t take her advice, but the advice of his team members, you clearly can see her entire demeanor change. She is somewhat upset and at somewhat of a loss for words. So what does she do? She reaches out for him to give him physical contact, a hug that is very weird and awkward. She knows that touching him has worked for her in the past, so since her words were unable to reassure him, maybe her touch will. But as we all saw, yes Buck is very tactile, but even he wasn’t satisfied with their little awkward hug. Because he needs more than touch, he needs words, someone who will understand him and speak his love language back to him. Clearly, that person is not Taylor and I don’t think it ever will be Taylor.
Now when we take a look at Buck’s entire relationship with Eddie, we see a significant difference in how they work. Eddie has always been this closed off, private guy. He’s quiet and sassy, and is overall great with words. But given his upbringing and the environment in which he grew up in, maybe he wasn’t able to freely express his words as much as he does with Buck now. But, there’s just the simple way of how much Eddie knows Buck, like really knows him. He know’s how well Buck takes to words of affirmation, and because he knows this, he uses words to speak in a language in which Buck will understand. What do I mean by this? Well Eddie has been known to show his love with Acts of Service. He has left Christopher in Buck’s care when Buck was depressed. He invited Buck over to hang out with him and his son for each Christmas they’ve known each other. He has wholly embraced Buck into his family, in hopes of showing how important Buck is to him. But even then, considering all these acts Eddie does for Buck, he still does not grasp how important he is, or how loved he is until Eddie explicitly tells him. It wasn’t enough that Eddie trusted his son in Buck’s care, but when Eddie told Buck, “There’s nobody in this world I trust more with my son, than you”, you can see the automatic effect it has on Buck. We see him registering Eddie’s words, the meaning and importance behind those words. Then we get the iconic moment where Buck tells Eddie it would have been better for all of them if Buck was the one who got shot. He is insecure about himself and you can see how low his self esteem is in that moment. What does Eddie do? He tells Buck about his will. He made that action a year ago, once again using his own love language to show Buck how important and loved he is. But it wasn’t until Eddie told him explicitly, “Because, Evan…You act like you’re expendable. But you’re wrong”, that Buck understood how important and loved he really is by Eddie. It wasn’t enough for Eddie to just give Buck his entire heart, no he had to tell Buck that’s what he was doing so it registered with Buck the importance of it. There have been many more instances where Eddie has been supportive and reassuring to Buck with his words, but that means I would go on forever. Eddie truly knows who Buck is as a person to the extent where he not only understands Buck’s love language, but he keeps making an effort to speak it back to him where he can understand it. Even in 5.05, Eddie chooses words to let Buck know that he’s “Stuck with us” because he knows how insecure Buck was about the entire Chimney situation. It wasn’t until Eddie and the team reassured Buck with their words, that we saw him finally relax and truly smile for the first time. They were able to do what Taylor wasn’t able to.
With all things considered, we have seen time and time again how easily Eddie and Buck love each other because they both speak one another’s love languages. In order for any successful relationship to thrive, I think it’s super important that your partner really understands your love language and speaks in back to you. We have seen Taylor struggle with this and I think she will continue struggling with this because her and Buck truly do not know each other well enough. Whereas Buck and Eddie are solid in that department and I think we will continue seeing Eddie supporting Buck through his words, which will then lead into him confessing his love for Buck, so that Buck truly does know that Eddie is serious. He is in love with him and the only way to make it truly known to Buck will be to explicitly confess his feelings.