What Are the 5 Love Languages? Dr. Gary Chapmen Explains How They Help Couples Fall More Deeply in Love? | Poppy and Geoff Spencer, M. S. , Cpc
It’s Been Said That Marriage and Relationships Are Hard Work. We Respectfully Disagree. When Relationships Feel Like a Struggle, We Believe That More Likely...
It’s been said that marriage and relationships are hard work. We respectfully disagree.
When relationships feel like a struggle, we believe that more likely than not, there are two factor being overlooked by one or both people involved — understanding and communication.
That's why learning what the five love languages are, which of them you and your partner speak, and how to integrate them in your daily interactions can make it easier to both understand and heal what's been missing your relationship.
With that knowledge in play, you can quickly deepen the intimacy between you and fall more in love with each other than ever before.
We recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate. During our time together we discussed a wide variety of the many ways his work has improved relationships between millions of people.
What are the five love languages?
The five love languages, explained below, represent the five most common ways people innately prefer to both experience and receive love:
- Words of Affirmation: saying positive things to your partner, like a compliment
- Acts of Service: doing something considerate for them or on their behalf, like vacuuming
- Receiving Gifts: giving your partner tangible tokens of affection, like flowers
- Quality Time: couple time spent bonding, like going on a hike together
- Physical Touch: physical acts of affection, like holding hands
Here are 5 nuggets Dr. Chapman shared in our interview with him about how the five love languages can help couples in marriages and long-term relationships fall more deeply in love.
1. Recognize that love is a choice.
Most of us have heard that love is a verb, and it is one we can choose to practice or not.
“If you know your spouse’s love language," Chapman insists, "then speaking it is a choice.”
Even though learning your partner’s love language may not feel comfortable or natural for you, do it anyway.
"I say to people sometimes, ‘You know, my wife’s language is acts of service,'" Chapman continues, "and I say, 'I vacuum the floors for her. Do you think that vacuuming floors come naturally for me? No, no. But I do it, not because I enjoy vacuuming, but because I know it makes her feel love.’ So you have to determine that you're going to learn the love language and then you choose to do it."
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2. Pay attention to the nuances of your partner's primary love language.
After learning the ins and outs of each of the five love languages, it’s valuable to dig deeper to understand the subtleties that Dr. Chapman calls the "dialects" in each of them.
Just as each city has its own colloquialisms ("You know you’re from _______ if you say this…"), each of the 5 love languages has nuances as well.
For example, even if both you and your partner's your primary love language is acts of service, you might not do the same things for one another. In our relationship, Geoff chooses to fold laundry and vacuum, while Poppy chooses to make meals and manage most of their business correspondences.
These are dialects of the same primary love language, but the way it's expressed and received differs.
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