Love languages: The 5 types and how to find yours
How do you express love and receive it?
Text: Livvie B
During his early career working as a marriage counsellor, Dr. Gary Chapman soon recognised a pattern amongst the couples he met. The most common complaint would be that one spouse would feel that their partner didn’t love them, who, in turn, would protest that they were doing everything in their power to show their love.
It struck Dr Chapman that communication is the most common issue in any relationship, and that different people express love in different ways. Drawing on his experience, Dr Chapman penned the book The 5 Love Languages in which he presented a simple truth: that relationships grow better when we understand one another, and that everyone gives and receives love in different ways. By recognising this, Chapman argues, we will be better equipped to express love well.
His book became a New York Times #1 bestseller and has since sold over 12 million copies globally, with people praising his theory. In it, he sorts our ‘love languages’ into five distinct categories as a bid to help everyone for improve their relationships. According to Dr Chapman, the languages are:
Words of affirmation: these people seek and value verbal acknowledgements of affection. Verbal encouragement and frequent communication (even through messages) means a lot to them.
Acts of service: these people believe that small actions speak louder than words, and this is how they feel most cared for; they like it when their partner goes out of their way to make their lives easier, such as helping out with domestic chores, or running an errand when they have had a busy week at work.
Receiving gifts: these people like physical symbols of love — it’s not so much about the value of a gift, but the meaning and through process behind it. They like to feel that their partner was thinking of them when they were not together
Quality time: these people feel most loved when their partner wants to spend a lot of time with them, and makes an effort to plan uninterrupted quality time. They also appreciate it when, when they are spending time together, their partner makes an active effort to stay engaged.
Physical touch: these people enjoy physical intimacy, and see touch as the most affirming factor in their relationship
Dr Chapman argues that people tend to give love in the same way they like to receive it, and that understanding this will help couples create long-lasting bonds.
To find out more about how love languages work, The Soothe caught up with Lindley Craig, a certified IANLP Trainer and President of the NLP Association Singapore. Through Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Lindley helps clients to learn more about the power of their own mind, and how this can be used to overcome challenges and improve communication skills. Relationships are one of her specific areas of interest.
Image Credit: Lindley Craig
Please share more about NLP and how learning the basics can benefit individuals overall?
NLP is a set of tools and techniques that help people in many different ways — it’s like having an instruction manual for your brain. NLP techniques are life skills for communication and conflict management, mindset, emotional resilience, influencing and so much more.
How can NLP be used to help our romantic relationships?
There are many techniques in NLP which help with romantic relationships. If two people have different unconscious programs it can cause conflict in a relationship without either knowing what the source of the conflict is. Just having one person in the relationship know about these programs can change the situation completely.
For example, my husband and I used to get into terrible fights about a simple question, “How was your day?” When I asked him, he would give me a simple, one-word answer. I would then ask him a dozen questions to find out more and he would get mad. When he asked me how my day was, I would tell him everything that went on in great detail. A few minutes in, his eyes would be rolling in the back of his head and I would get upset that he didn’t want to listen. Every night, we had the same issue.
However, after taking a simple NLP program, these arguments stopped. Over time, we were able to identify other situations where these conflicting programs caused us problems and eliminated those, too.
Are the love languages an important framework for better understanding how we – and our partners – respond in our relationship?
We see the five love languages as different strategies people have to express love; just like with an unconscious program, we often are not aware of our own ways of expressing ourselves, let alone anyone else’s.
It’s important that we understand how we like to receive love, as well as how we give love. Once we’re armed with this knowledge, it’s also important that we’re flexible with our style, as well as our own needs, to enable us to accept love from others in whichever way they give it to us.
What’s your advice for couples who take the love languages test and find out that they have conflicting languages?
It’s all about being flexible and understanding that people give and receive love in different ways, as well as adjusting our own style slightly. Just like all programs, our love languages can change over time, however, it’s usually a very slow change.
Is it possible to figure out somebody’s love language without them knowing?
Conduct an experiment. For 30 days, test one of the love languages on your partner; if you choose ‘words of affirmation,’ make sure you give them authentically; if it’s touch, give them a 30 second hug every day. By the end of the month, see if you notice any changes. If their love towards you is overflowing, then you have likely found your partner’s love language. If you don’t notice much of a change, pick another love language and conduct another experiment!
Can the love languages theory be applied to non-romantic relationships?
Absolutely. The theory is simply about how we give and receive love and show care, so this can be applied to other relationships in our lives, as well as romantic ones.
Book a session with coach Lindley Craig here or discover more about The 5 Love Languages by Dr Gary Chapman here.
