The 5 Love Languages
By Gary Chapman
If you haven’t heard of this book by now, I’m pretty surprised. Comically I have had this book for almost a year now and finally picked it up and read it cover to cover in one night. It’s a short read, about 200 pages, but I read it in one sitting because it was so intriguing.
If you know nothing about the book, in brief as the title gives clue, it is about the 5 different love languages; Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Acts of Service, Physical Touch and Receiving Gifts. Dr. Chapman goes into detail about the languages and uses examples from real life relationships that helped him discover these said languages. As I read through the chapters of each language, it was fairly easy for me to pick out which language I “spoke”. Others I read over, I knew immediately were not my language, for instance “Receiving Gifts”. Not on my priority of how someone can express love to me, personally.
What I found through reading about other couples stories, one partner thought they knew how to express love towards their spouse. When in fact they were completely off base. They had good intentions but they were expressing love in the way they like receiving it. BUT if their partner did not “speak the same language”, that love was not received. And to delve a little deeper, some couples speak the same language but have different dialects. For instance, if both partners love language is “Quality Time” one partner may like the simplicity of just going to a park or watching a movie with their spouse. While the other considers quality time to be face to face conversation with no distractions, like the TV. So you see how different these languages can be, just like the different languages of our world.
I’m not usually one to pick up a book such as this, but a friend recommended it to me, so I thought why not? And after the year of letting it sit around, I’m really happy I finally picked it up. You can apply this information to any relationship in your life. Whether it be work, friends, marriage, dating and even if you’re single (he has a book just for singles!).
Even if your relationship with your spouse is great, I still encourage you to read this. It will make you understand you spouse even more than you already do. Who knows your relationship could blossom even more!
If you want to find out what your love language is you can buy the book , there is a quiz at the back, or visit the website https://5lovelanguages.com//.
You may surprise yourself as to how little you know in expressing love “correctly” to your spouse. Or even mistaken as to how you like love expressed to you!