A friend asked me one day, and my instinctive answer was no. Not for a long-term relationship. The question came along with a book, “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman, so I started reading it.
It was a good thing that I didn’t google the author before reading it; maybe if I had found out that in addition to being a marriage counselor, the author was also a pastor, I might have read it more reluctantly. But when I found out it was too late, his theory was already kissing my logic, and I found it interesting. The theory.
In a nutshell, the man says that there are 5 love languages and that each person has a primary language through which he expresses and receives love. And if in the first two years of the relationship the language may be overshadowed by chemistry, after that, if you don’t learn to speak the other’s language, you probably won’t understand each other. You give him a hard time, and you don’t feel like banging him because he doesn’t take out the garbage; he would like to bang you and doesn’t understand why it’s so important for you to take out the garbage first. Mainly because you speak the language of “acts of service” in this situation, and he speaks the language of “physical touch.”
The 5 love languages detected from his experience as a marriage counselor and at the same time as a husband in a 45-year marriage are:
– words of affirmation
– quality time
– receiving gifts
– acts of service
– physical touch
Obviously, the 5 languages intersect at a certain level and influence each other, but it seems that one is the main one, and if the partner does not speak that one, you are miserable, even if he knows some words in the other languages.
To determine which one is your main language, you can do it in two ways: thinking about which one makes you really happy or the lack of making you completely unhappy. For example, if you think that your language consists of “physical touch,” think about what it would be like to have awesome sex with him, but he tells you that you are stupid and incompetent when you want to do something. Of course, it’s an extreme example, but you get the point.
The funny thing is that after reading the book, except that you realize better where the misunderstandings in the relationship with your partner start from, you will also better understand your parents, siblings, children, and friends. And it will be fun to try to identify everyone’s language based on lifelong behavior. Maybe you’ll give the book as a gift to your mother, too, so she can learn to scold your father less and encourage him more. Or whatever works for them.
