The five love languages by Gary Chapman

This theory comes from a book from 1992. Recently it has come up again among the youth. I learned about this theory through Tiktok and then by researching it myself.

Chapman outlines five general ways that partners express and experience love. They are acts of service, gift giving, physical touch, quality time and words of affirmation.

According to this theory each person has one primary and one secondary love language. Chapman says that if you want to know someone’s love language you have to observe how they express love to others and listen to what they complain about the most and what they request from their partner. He theorizes that people tend to love in the way they prefer to be loved. One example would be if the other partner loves physical touch and is touching his partner all the time and her love language is acts of service, she might feel overwhelmed by the amount of touching she is experiencing. She values more when he brings her water or warm tea and that’s how she knows he loves her and he is trying to express his love by touching and hugging. Both value those as an act of love.

If you are interested to know what your love language is, there are a lot of quizzes you can take. One of the most popular one is by www.5lovelanguages.com.