5 Love Languages

Recently Melanie read a book called The 5 Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. For about six months now, she has been asking me to watch a video presentation on the book. Finally, we sat down and watched the  presentation and discussed the book together. I found Dr. Chapman's explanation of the types of love expressions to be very intriguing. During the presentation he outlined each type of love language and I wondered which category I fell into:

Words of Affirmation

Quality Time

Receiving Gifts

Acts of Service

Physical Touch

Over the last week, I have thought a lot about which love language might best describe myself. I had a hard time discerning which would be dominant. I also had a hard time determining Melanie's love language. We had a good time discussing each other's love languages as well of that of our friends and family. Some people are more easily distinguished (and more easily pleased) than others, mainly those that fall into the language of Receiving Gifts. Melanie and I are a little harder to determine because we are both more rounded in each language (Melanie, more so than me).

Ultimately, we decided to take the online test to determine how the categories were measured, and which love language was dominant. I tested dominant in Quality Time and the rest in descending order as follows:

Words of Affirmation

Acts of Service

Physical Touch

Receiving Gifts (actually I scored no points on this one)

Melanie tested as follows:

Words of Affirmation

Quality Time

Physical Touch

Acts of  Service

Receiving Gifts

So what does this have to do with anything? If I am a Quality Time person and my wife thinks that she shows love to me by giving me gifts...we've got a problem (not that that's our case, is it yours?). If my wife knows that I am a Quality Time person then she is empowered to show me love in the way that I need it most. On the flip side, now that I know Melanie is dominant in Words of Affirmation I can try harder to show my love for her in the manner that will mean the most to her.

A fun thing to do is look back on all the advise people gave me when I was getting married. Most likely, the advise given from a specific person is a statement of their individual dominant love language and what they need, or what they have learned their spouse's to be. I believe advise is usually given with good intentions, but clearly it should be taken with a grain of salt (advise is really just the opinion of the person giving it and may not really apply). In regards to relationships I often hear something like, "You need to serve your spouse." In my mind that means Acts of Service. But that is too broad and vague at the same time. In my case, if I were to show love to Melanie by Acts of Service it wouldn't be the most beneficial. That love language should definitely be sprinkled on, but it is not Melanie's dominant language and therefore should not receive the most emphasis. Hence, the common advise, "you need to serve your spouse (or each other)" should be rephrased to, "You need to find each other's love language and act on that."

Whether you think you have a great relationship or not I suggest you take the online quiz and have your spouse do it to. By so doing, you will know how to give your spouse the love he/she needs most and hopefully vice versa.

And here are some entertaining perspectives about people trying hard to speak each other's love languages but not necessarily succeeding. See if you can guess which language is dominant in each person.