The 5 Love Languages: How To Receive And Express Love
- olivierbranford
- Dec 30, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 25
As men, we do not always know how to receive or express love. The '5 Love Languages' refer to five ways people express and experience emotional affection in relationships. Understanding these languages can benefit any relationship by ensuring partners effectively communicate care in a way most meaningful to each other.
The '5 Love Languages' from simplypsychology.org
Watch this video on 'The Five Love Languages' by simplypsychology.com:
'The 5 Love Languages' by simplypsychology.com
Originally developed by marriage counselor Dr. Gary Chapman in his 1992 book, drawing on his expertise in linguistics and marriage guidance counselling, the five love languages are:
Words of Affirmation: Communicating affection through spoken and written praise, appreciation, encouragement, and frequent “I love you’s”.
Quality Time: Expressing love by fully focusing attention on your partner through shared activities, conversation, and togetherness.
Physical Touch: Showing care through intimate and affectionate physical contact like holding hands, hugging, kissing, and sex.
Acts of Service: Doing thoughtful deeds and gestures to help make your partner’s life easier by relieving burdens.
Receiving Gifts: Giving meaningful surprises and symbolic presents to celebrate affection.
Understanding these can enhance communication in relationships, by helping individuals express love in the manner their partner best understands. Someone whose love language is words of affirmation, prefers love to be expressed through spoken words, praise, or appreciation. Those who identify Words of Affirmation as their primary love language cherish hearing, "I love you," along with genuine compliments and heartfelt words of appreciation. They feel understood and appreciated when these affirmations are spoken sincerely. On the flip side, negative or insulting comments can hurt these individuals deeply.
The Quality Time love language is about giving your undivided attention to someone else, making them feel truly seen and heard. This means spending time together without distractions, focusing fully on each other, and engaging in meaningful conversations or shared activities. For individuals whose primary love language is Quality Time, what matters most is just being together, being fully present and engaged, and sharing experiences. This could involve activities like going for a walk, having dinner together without any distractions, watching a movie, or even just sitting together and talking about the day. Quality Time isn't necessarily about the quantity of time spent together, but the quality of that time. The important aspect is the attention and care put into these moments. For these individuals, distractions, postponed dates, or the failure to listen can be especially hurtful.
For individuals whose primary love language is Physical Touch, physical expressions of love are crucial. This could include hugging, holding hands, kissing, cuddling, a pat on the back, a touch on the arm, sex, or even simply sitting close to each other. They often feel unloved without physical contact. It's important to note that this love language is not only about intimacy in a romantic relationship. It also involves any form of touch that communicates affection, care, comfort, and presence. In moments of crisis, they will likely appreciate a hug or a reassuring hand on their shoulder more than comforting words or thoughtful actions.
The Acts of Service love language involves showing love and affection through actions, rather than words. This could mean doing tasks you know your partner would like you to do, with an aim to ease their burdens and make their life more comfortable or simpler. These acts of service can be as simple as doing the washing up, cooking a meal, taking care of the children, running errands, or fixing something around the house. The key element is the act of serving the other person to express love. For individuals whose primary love language is Acts of Service, actions truly speak louder than words. They value the time, effort, and consideration it takes to carry out these actions. However, broken commitments or making the other person's life more difficult could be especially hurtful to them.
For someone with Receiving Gifts as their primary love language, they appreciate and feel most loved when they receive tangible symbols of love. It's important to note that it isn't about materialism or the monetary value of the gift; instead, it's about the thought, effort, and sentiment behind the gift. These individuals value the time and consideration that goes into choosing a gift that reflects their interests, tastes, or needs. The gift is seen as a physical symbol of love and thoughtfulness, an embodiment of the giver's care and affection. A missed birthday, anniversary, or a thoughtless gift would be particularly hurtful to someone for whom gifts is the primary love language.
Dr. Gary Chapman's 2010 analysis of 10,000 online quiz results revealed that words of affirmation were the most popular love language, but only just. However, in 2018, the dating app Hinge found that quality time significantly outpaced the other love languages as the most common preference among its users.
Dr. Gary Chapman said that “I discovered the five love languages out of my counselling. They would sit in my office and one of them would say I just feel like he doesn’t love me or she doesn’t love me and the other person would say I don’t understand that, I do this and this and this, why would you not feel loved?”
Chapman concluded that people don’t give and receive love in the same ways and that everyone has a primary love language that speaks to them most deeply.
Chapman's 5 Love Languages: How to communicate and things to avoid
Essentially, Chapman found that his client’s partners may have been expressing love, but it was not in a meaningful way to their partners. They may instead have been receiving an expression of love that is not connected to their love language.
By finding out people’s love languages and the love language of their partner, Chapman suggests that this can help people ensure that they both truly feel loved.
Chapman explains that falling in love is a ‘temporary emotional high’ and that after the initial emotional obsession has died down, partners must put in the effort to pursue what he terms ‘real love.’
He stated that after time in a relationship, couples might forget how to have meaningful connections with their partners. However, through understanding and practicing their partner’s love language, they can rectify and revive these relationships.
All five love languages are equally important, but people differ on the ones they prefer. Some people may appreciate all five, while others may actively dislike one or more.
Chapman suggested several methods in his 1992 book for discovering people’s love languages. He developed the Five Love Languages Profile, which is an online scale that you can use (found here).
One study by Egbert and Polk (2006) tested this validity on students. The results showed that the common love languages expressed by the students matched those of Chapman’s theory; this study is the first empirical support of the theory.
Likewise, Surijah and Septiarly (2016) aimed to validate the love languages theory. The five love languages scale seemed to show a promising reliability score, and there were found to be 17 items on the scale which were valid.
One study on love languages found that if someone perceived that their partner was using their preferred love language well, they had increased feelings of love and relationship satisfaction. This was the case for heterosexual and homosexual couples (Hughes & Camden, 2020).
The same researchers also found that women who perceived their partners were using their preferred love language well reported greater feelings of love compared to men’s perceptions.
What is your love language and what is that of your partner? They may well not be the same, so don't assume that they are. I know what my top three love languages are. Do you? For more information on this click on this link.
Namaste.
Olly
Dr Olly Alexander Branford MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD.
Fully qualified and certified coach
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