The Five Love Languages
Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages is a wonderful book about how we all speak different love languages, well he says it’s 5 although he also talks about dialects for each, so maybe there’s 25 🙂
The Five Love Languages are:
- Words of Affirmation – this is about telling the other they look good, that we appreciate their hard work and thanking them.
- Quality Time – this on is about spending time together without distractions, could be just 10 minutes on couch.
- Gifts – when you like receiving gifts, if you spouse lights up when you buy her jewelry for example.
- Acts of Service – if you feel love when you spouse prepares meals, does the laundry of cuts the grass.
- Physical Touch – if you need hugs, holding hands or sitting close to each other enough to touch.
He also explains that we may have all these languages to varying degrees but we have a primary and a secondary love language. Sometimes, it’s easier to think of the opposite to see if your love language is one or the other. For example, you may think that physical touch is your primary language because you desire sexual intercourse so much, but if it would hurt your deeply, to the point of not wanting sexual intercourse, if your spouse spoke critical words or brought you down in front of others or generally insulted you, you might rather have words of affirmation as your primary love language.
Children have a love language too
Keep in mind this is a quite complex subject and he discusses how our children have a love language and learning this helps us understand them so much better. For example, a child that has physical touch as a love language will love to get hugs and kisses and would be devastated to get hit or a slap.
We tend to love others using our own love language, so a child that has gifts as a love language would often be bringing us gifts and crafts they made and a child that has acts of service as a love language would enjoy helping with the laundry or dishes.
I’d love to hear what your love language is, please comment below and share this post if you liked it.