The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts

I purchased my first copy of “The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate” by Gary Chapman in 1992. After spotting him in North Carolina earlier this year, I decided to purchase the audiobook. Not only did I want to listen to Chapman read his book out loud, but I also wanted to digest his work through the lens of older, hopefully wiser, eyes. In a recent Bible study, someone brought up the verse about flattering lips. I thought this was an excellent segue into one of Chapman’s love languages—words of affirmation. Numerous people feel extraordinarily loved when they are appreciated. The other four primary love languages the author discusses are: gifts, physical touch, quality time, and acts of service. I especially appreciated Chapman’s chapters on applying the love languages when only one partner is interested in improving the relationship. He offers practical tips, encouragement, and step-by-step examples on how to gather your partner’s complaints, address their frustrations, and show them love, regardless of your or their love language. One addition I would have appreciated in Chapman’s reference to “Loving the Unlovely” would have been to address a hyper-critical spouse who refuses to offer words of affirmation or positive feedback. Chapman’s technique for improving a marriage relies on the other spouse responding. Regardless, Chapman’s technique has undoubtedly helped hundreds of struggling wives and husbands feel loved and experience a successful marriage. This classic is an excellent Bible Study resource for small groups, Bible studies, and couples. If you enjoyed “The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate,” you may enjoy “For Women Only, Revised and Updated Edition: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men” by Shaunti Feldhahn and “For Men Only (Revised and Updated Edition): A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women” by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn.

Love Language was such an eye-opening and meaningful read. The book does a beautiful job explaining how people give and receive love in different ways, and it helped me understand my relationships on a much deeper level. The examples were relatable, the writing was easy to follow, and I found myself reflecting on my own habits and communication style.

I've read dozens of books on the psychology of relationships, but this is one of the best and most useful I've ever seen. Gary Chapman's unique concept of "The 5 Love Languages" (Affirmations, Quality Time, Acts of Service, Gifts, and Physical Touch) describes how knowing and using the 5 love languages can improve and deepen loving relationships, while misunderstanding them can cause harm. The information in this book is well-organized, easy to read and understand, and includes lots of stories that are not only interesting, but clearly illustrate the author's point. There is also a self-assessment tool at the end, plus links to additional info online. Dr. Chapman's basic concept is that "5 love languages" are commonly used in committed relationships to express love and affection toward one's partner. Chapman explains that loving couples can run into trouble if they don't know and understand their own dominant love language or that of their partner. A relationship can thrive if and when each person understands which specific love language is most important to themselves and also knows and honors their partner's most important way of receiving love, which is often different from their own. All 5 of the love languages are equally useful and valid; none are better or more preferred than any other. They simply reflect how an individual's unique needs, expectations, and personality are expressed by the ways they most want to receive love from their partner. Dr. Chapman devotes a chapter to each of "The 5 Love Languages" using stories from his practice as a licensed Marriage and Family Counselor to show the need for using the correct expressions of love and how using the wrong love language can damage an otherwise good relationship. For example, if a wife's dominant love language is affirmations (including compliments, encouragement, appreciation, and gratitude) but her husband doesn't understand how important these positive words are to her, he might think it's OK to tease her about her looks, accuse her of being lazy, or criticize her cooking. When she needs kind and supportive words but hears insults and put-downs instead, she will feel unloved, no matter what else he does to show he cares. He could surprise her with flowers, hug and kiss her when he comes home, fix the leaky faucet, or offer to take the kids to the park, but still, if he does not give her the words she needs, she will feel unappreciated and unfulfilled. On the other hand, if the husband's dominant love language is spending quality time with his wife, but his wife thinks that taking good care of the house & kids and cooking him a nice meal every night is the best way to show him her love, he will feel resentful and misunderstood. What he needs most is for her to set aside time for listening and sharing with him, for making plans, and spending quality time one-on-one. If she does not understand how important quality time is to him, that will damage their relationship. Having a weekly date night is probably the most important thing this couple could do to improve their marriage. "The 5 Love Languages" is written specifically for married couples, but the advice could easily be applied to ANY relationship, including family and friends. The author has written other books using the 5 languages concept, such as "The 5 Love Languages" for parents - how to express love to their children and teens. Some kids thrive on physical touch when young, but the kind of touch is likely to change when they become teens. Some kids rely on quality time with one or both parents, while others want more time alone but still need to hear lots of affirmations. I wish I had known about "The 5 Love Languages" when my kids were little, but now that they are grown I can still use what I've learned to improve all my relationships. Overall, this book is the real deal, both important and useful. I highly recommend "The 5 Love Languages" to anyone wanting to learn how to improve and express love in their relationships.

Introduction: In “The 5 Love Languages”, Gary Chapman displays his masterful understanding of the single factor necessary to create and maintain a healthy relationship – Love. Through his experience as a counselor, stories from the road and journey as a student, Dr. Chapman has been able to materialize the immaterial force which permeates all marriages and relationships, providing the advice which almost no one can articulate. Dr. Chapman has found the languages of love itself, “Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch.” What You will Gain: After reading this book, you will find yourself rapidly improving your relationship with your spouse, children, and family. I the heard enthusiastic, supporting words, “Our relationship has been different over the past week!” after implementing the wisdom from “The 5 Love Languages.” You will even find yourself watching drama-filled talk shows like “Dr. Phil,” being able to pinpoint each spouse’s love language and how they are not fulfilling it based on their complaints. It is very enjoyable to wield this skill, but also extremely practical. Instead of criticizing your spouse, you can create the environment to facilitate change, and the best part is, both partners do not have to be on the same page! That’s right,” The 5 Love Languages” work without needing both partners to read, so if you didn’t marry a reader, you’re in luck! Conclusion: This was my first dedicated relationship book, and I’m glad it was. “The 5 Love Languages” was not only a quick read, but easy to digest and entertaining. I purchased it for the incredibly low price of $6.86 in new condition (can’t get much better than that, even at a used bookstore). Based on all the things discussed above, I can easily endorse this book and frankly recommend it to everyone! Even if you’re not married, this book covers relationship dynamics you can apply anywhere.

When I was about 75% of the way through this book, I had intended on giving it 5 stars. It's lost a star and I'll explain why. First I'll start with the meat on this bone. Dr. Gary Chapman makes a brilliant observation: There are multiple and specific ways to express love, Words of Admiration, Acts of Service, Quality time, Physical Touch, and Gift Giving. Followed by the following brilliant observations: How we are raised influences our beliefs about how to express love to others. That we can naturally have an inborn way that we feel expresses our love (regardless of how we were raised). We have an inborn way of how we *want* to be loved. We can fail to recognize that others love us when they don't express it in the way we need, and others can fail to realize we love them if we are expressing love in a way that isn't meaningful to them. Those are the best parts of the books in a nutshell. I have several disagreements with other observations Dr. Chapman makes. One is he tends to harp repeatedly on there being one almost magical form of love expression that will make a person feel loved. I disagree with this, as I think most people will have a spectrum across the five traits, finding perhaps one most meaningful, but they will have feelings on all five categories. I also think he seemed to present the Five Categories as a Holy Grail, instead of guidelines. These were minor grievances however. Then came some problematic language. During most of the first part of the book, Dr. Chapman makes religious references to church, and although it aroused my suspicions (I hate when a book devolves into religious mumbo jumbo) the references seemed to just regulate the topic to another activity couples could share, like both enjoying going to see concerts. However, the end of the book did end in scripture quotes, and extremely questionable advice to a woman who apparently seemed to be in an abusive relationship. Dr. Chapman's view of divorce as immoral then came to the forefront. And I believe his faith came before a woman in need of help. The woman was being emotionally and verbally abused, and very possibly a victim of marital rape. Her own faith was tearing her apart, since her friends, and indeed her emotions were telling her to get out of the relationship. She came to Dr. Chapman to enable her to find a way *not to leave*. When she told Dr. Chapman that all her husband seemed to want her for was sex, Dr. Chapman *going against* references he's made earlier in the book (stating that if love isn't expressed freely, it is not a true expression of love, but rather fear), then he made the suggestion that her husbands language of love was "physical touch" and that she should sleep with him more. The women reacted negatively to the suggestion, saying how emotionally damaged she would feel after a sex act with a man who ignores her and treats her coldly and critically. Dr. Chapman's response was downright cruel and I believe sexist, urging her to ignore her feelings and aim to sleep with her husband twice a week. We live in a culture where sex is seen an act, something a woman gives a man, but is separate from her being. We don't see sex as just two people interacting sexually. And I felt his language attested to having this opinion. That women were sort of sexless, desireless creatures, and should sacrifice being comfortable or feeling safe to satisfy their husbands need for sex. He also expressed in the book his belief that polyamory is unnatural and immoral, and equated it with cheating, and inevitably resulting in abandonment of a spouse. Polyamory obviously happens, so it's absurd to call it unnatural. And while yes, many folks do cheat under the guise of polyamory, polyamory can work when communication, trust, honesty and willpower are combined. The book is still well worth the read. However I found it to be one good idea over-explained, and a few bad ideas, thankfully, mostly just touched on.

I first heard of this book a number of years ago and it had been on my wish list of books to read for awhile, not necessarily because my husband and I have trouble in our marriage; it's more that there is always room for improvement in many areas of life, especially a relationship as important as a marriage. Finally, I decided to just buy it because I heard several of my friends talking about it. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages, has determined that everyone speaks a different love language, meaning the way they show someone they love them. The five languages he has identified are: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. Speaking a love language is similar to speaking a foreign language. For instance, if I speak French and I meet someone who speaks German, we are going to have a difficult time communicating if we don't at least know how to speak the other person's primary language. The same goes for the love languages. Some people may have more than one but there is usually one love language that speaks loudest to that person. The author says most individuals speak a different love language than their spouse and it's important to know how to speak the other person's language so you can communicate effectively and have a more loving and successful marriage. This book is divided into several chapters that average about ten pages long so they aren't incredibly long and drawn-out. There are five chapters discussing each of the love languages as well as talking about love and how to apply these love languages in the relationship with your spouse. There are several Frequently Asked Questions and profiles (quizzes) for both individuals to determine their primary and secondary love languages. Chapman states that you can select the chapters you'd like to read based on what you believe your love language is but I found reading the entire book to be extremely helpful since I thought about myself and my husband and how these love languages apply to our marriage. It's not a particularly long book (just over 200 pages) so it won't take a long time to read and I like how the book is organized in easy-to-read sections with anecdotes about couples the author has spoken with (names have been changed) and main points located in "bubbles" in the margins. I really enjoyed reading this book and found it to be very helpful. My husband and I even had a conversation about the topics in this book and we've talked about how we can use our newly-discovered love languages and apply them to our marriage to make it even more loving, happy and successful. Regardless of if you've been married for 40 years or are engaged to be married, I'd highly recommend reading this book. I regret not reading it sooner because so many actions between my husband and I now make more sense. I've already got two friends queued up to read this book so I'm glad I purchased the paperback version which makes it easy to lend out. I haven't read many books on relationships and marriage but I really liked how easy and interesting it was to read this and I'm now looking into purchasing The 5 Love Languages of Children since I want my kids to know they are loved more than anything. I highly recommend this book!

This is one of our favorite books to read each a year. As the years pass in a relationship, you often fall into patterns or assumptions. Reading through this book together, at the very least, opens up the door for conversations you may not have had otherwise, and at the most, it transforms your relationship! Everyone should read it at least once. It’s light/short read.

Needed for class, really opened my eyes to the different ways people need to feel seen.