We all have five major ways of expressing love. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t able to understand or speak all five love languages. This inability creates tensions in our relationships that really should be filled with love and compassion. In his book, The 5 Love Languages
- Quality Time
- Words of Affirmation
- Physical Touch
- Acts of Service
- Gifts
Trained as a marriage counselor, Gary Chapman demonstrates how most rocky relationships are the result of one person not understanding or speaking the love language of the other. The author demonstrates that relationships can be improved by 1) identifying a person’s love language, and then 2) making a conscious effort to speak that language. For example, I used to not care that much about giving gifts. Why? I would always be concerned with the practical aspect of a potential gift; would person X really benefit from this gift? But Gary Chapman demonstrates, and all you gift givers will know, its emotion embodied in the gift that counts a lot more than the actual gift. So, my problem was that I didn’t know how to speak the love language of gifts. I probably didn’t know how to understand that language when it was spoken to me either; I remember the countless birthday parties when I didn’t really feel that excited because I didn’t see the practical benefit of the event.
The author demonstrates how people behave when they can’t speak a particular language by describing the experiences he had as a counselor with people who weren’t speaking the right love language. These experiences allow the reader to understand the kinds of miscommunication that can take place. And then the book shows you what questions you need to ask of yourself and how to start making a conscious effort to speak a certain love language. At the end of the book, a quick quiz is provided so that you can determine your own primary love language. Dr. Chapman states that a person usually has one well defined primary love language with the others at different degrees of development. A must read.
And that’s jus’ the tip.
