Welcome to the world of “love languages”, where listing how you receive devotion is as easily reeled off as your current favourite Netflix series or star sign.
If you’re not well versed in this phenomenon, looking at people’s dating profiles can feel a little like you’ve stumbled into some kind of secret society or cult. It’s only fully entered the mainstream lexicon in the last few years, but the shorthand for how we express and receive love is now as ubiquitous as people saying they’re looking for their “partner in crime”, or following the classic dating app prompt “don’t hate me if I…” with the words “put pineapple on a pizza [crying laughing face emoji]”. (IYKYK.) But could the gospel according to love languages actually be holding us back when it comes to romantic relationships ?
If you’ve managed to miss this latest theory of life, the universe and everything, it runs thus: there are five main “love languages”, and apparently most of us have a primary and a secondary one. These five “languages” are: words of affirmation (expressing affection through spoken words, whether that be praise, appreciation or compliments); acts of service (practical things done for a partner, such as cleaning the kitchen, taking the bins out, fixing that broken door handle); quality time (giving the other person your undivided attention and spending time together in a meaningful and intentional way); physical touch (this isn’t just sex – it might be holding hands, kissing, hugging, giving a foot massage); and gifts (the time, thought and effort put into picking a present is usually what’s key here, rather than the amount of money spent).
The idea was posited by an American Baptist minister, Gary Chapman, in his book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, first published in 1992. He theorised that people tend to naturally demonstrate love in the way that they would prefer to receive it – and that figuring out what your love language is and communicating that to your partner can help ease tensions in a relationship.
For example, if you’re someone whose primary love language is acts of service, you might do a lot of things around the house – but then feel resentful if your other half never says thank you, or fails to do practical things for you in turn, because they don’t perceive that as an act of love.
“If I said to my partner, ‘You never notice when I put clean sheets on the bed,’ what I’m really saying and demonstrating is that this is the way I understand love – if you behave this way to me, that shows me you love me,” integrative psychotherapist, psychosexual and relationship therapist Helen Mayor says. “If my love language is gifts and I give my partner a gift, I’m also nudging him that this is the way I understand love in return – that I would like him to give me gifts to demonstrate care.”
Despite being more than 30 years old, the love languages theory has gained a remarkable amount of traction in the last three to four years, spurred on by social media and the TikTokification of simplified therapeutic ideas. Aside from dating-app speak, I’ve heard it being casually bandied about by male and female friends alike when attempting to explain struggles within their relationships.
“We now live in a world where people use psychotherapist-type terms for things as standard,” agrees Mayor. “Really, it’s all about clustering together frequencies of behaviours so that they resonate and can be easily digested by people. It’s noticing patterns of behaviour in couples and determining why there might be friction.”
As with most theories attempting to explain why we act in certain ways, it can be a tool for us to better understand one another. It’s a means of “simplifying another human’s response, of allowing another person to see us more clearly,” says Mayor. “Ultimately, anything that shows or simplifies another human’s way of communicating care and allows it to land can be valuable.”
