“What’s your love language?” is a Pigeonhole
As a quick and simple way to try and glean compatibility or greater understanding of another, it has become trendy to ask people the question, “What’s your love language?” In order to talk about love languages in a way that builds deeper connection and understanding, the question we should really be asking is “Which love languages do you speak and what is your favorite to communicate in?” Investigating the interactive patterns we fall into as a society allows us to identify areas in which we can strengthen the quality of our relationships and our overall health and well-being.[1-3]
The love languages so ubiquitously recognized today were introduced in 1992 by a Southern Baptist Pastor, Gary Chapman, who wrote mostly for an audience of married Christian couples. What has been lost from Chapman’s original texts as his book rose to widespread fame, is his urging toward learning to communicate in other people’s love languages.[4]
There are several issues with the way in which people broach the contemporary conversation about love languages, starting with the oversimplicity of the well-known question: “What’s your love language?” People often feel compelled to answer with one-- maybe two-- of the five options:[5]
Quality time
Acts of service
Physical touch
Words of affirmation
Gift giving
As a result of having to identify one singular language, their significant others may begin expressing affection in one singular way; a pigeonhole effect emerges and context is no longer considered. This is a loss because the way in which we communicate and behave is always impacted by our context; so, the way in which we each want to receive love probably shifts depending on circumstances, too.
A Tangent on Gift Giving
Of the five popularized love languages, it’s often most unpopular to say that one’s love language is gift giving-- it can sound shallow, frivolous, and meaningless. In actuality, gift giving is as legitimate and communicative a love language as any other. Gift giving does not have to mean your loved ones are running out to buy you a new watch or the latest iPhone, slapping a bow on it, and declaring your need for love fulfilled. Gift giving can look like your mom going grocery shopping, stumbling upon a new item that has candied almonds-- your favorite-- and buying them because she’s excited to make your day better. It can look like your roommate remembering that you mentioned you needed new sheets and then ordering them for you in your favorite color because they know you’re too stressed to deal with that yourself right now. And, it could be your partner picking up the latest iphone, putting a bow on it, and giving it to you because your current phone battery doesn’t last more than two hours.
Gift giving can be incredibly thoughtful, nurturing, connecting, and kind. It shows that you’re alive in people’s minds and hearts even when you’re not physically together; it shows that they were thinking of you and wanted you to feel their care, so they bought something to symbolize their desire for your happiness and wellbeing. Shankar Vedantam, the host of the Hidden Brain podcast, interviewed Jeff Galak (a Professor of Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University) about the secret of gift giving. Galak shared that he and his wife have kept an ongoing google doc for 12 years with items they’d like to one day receive or acquire. With this list, they eliminate the guessing inherent in much of our gift giving norms and are empowered to reliably purchase gifts for each other with complete certainty it will make the other happy. Galak reports success with this method, as neither joy nor surprise are extinguished as a consequence to explicitly recording what they want.[6]
The Multiplicity of Expression
Some people do not find it comforting to have a hand on their back when feeling sad. They may also find it irritating or unpleasant to hug others. That’s okay. Physical touch is generally not how they like to receive or show care. Some people have an extremely difficult time accepting compliments or do not feel supported by verbal validation. Words of affirmation probably tend to fall flat for them. Some people find that the bedrock of a good relationship is to have time together where both parties are fully present and undistracted by screens (i.e., quality time)… and also need physical touch and acts of service to feel seen and cared for. For many, there isn’t as clear a distinction between the categories as their different labels might imply. As an example, some people might define quality time as time spent cuddling or touching. Some of the languages might overlap or be part and parcel of each other.
There also exist people who feel comfortable and capable of communicating love in any and all of the five Chapman ways. The manner in which they choose to express themselves on a given day or in a given moment can depend on their mood, energy levels, financial situation, and who they are with. To ask a person, “What is your love language?” is to force that person to place the five options into a hierarchical ranking that fails to capture the complexity of the ways that person likes to receive and spread love. The question compels someone to have to select a single method of expressing love (out of an actual multitude of nuanced ways) above the rest. By having to whittle away the rich and important aspects of communicating love in order to give the questioner an extremely digestible response, with which they are likely using to simply sprinkle more of into the relationship, all of the depth and potential for greater understanding of one another is lost.
A Richer Conversation
Therefore, it is extremely limiting to ask someone to identify their one love language. Due to the fact that there are people who are versed in multiple languages and find joy in some, most, or all of the five (however that looks for them), more illuminating and exploratory avenues of conversation would be:
The languages expressed around them growing up; what languages did they learn from their parents/ caregivers?
Which situations do they prefer an emphasis on one language over another?
Which languages, if any, they struggle to feel safe or seen in; do any just never resonate?
Which languages, if any, do they want to learn or are trying to become more fluent in?
Which ones they like to receive more than give, or give more than receive (potential follow up question: how did that unidirectionality come to be?)
The Question About Love Languages Is Merely a Starting Point
While it makes sense that people would assume utility in the love language question as a concrete determinant of compatibility, research findings have been mixed. Ashley Fetters, a former staff writer at The Atlantic, explains that “If you sit down and read Chapman’s book, it’s clear that the love language you’re meant to think about isn’t your own, but your partner’s.”[7] The rushed way in which people discuss love languages today reflects an intention to find a partner with the same language, or at least to find someone willing to communicate in their preferred ones. We have lost sight of Chapman’s mission in having this conversation-- which was to learn how to express love in the language of the other-- in order to expedite the process of assessing compatibility. One study that tested the hypothesis that couples with the same love language would report higher relationship satisfaction found that self-regulatory behaviors had a greater impact on relationship satisfaction than having aligned languages.[8]
The ambiguity of the five terms also typically goes un-probed and assumed; what does “quality time” or “words of affirmation” even mean, if not explicated on an individual and personal level? By accepting an interlocutor’s answer at face value, one is projecting their own definition of those phrases onto the other, without learning what it means to them. A simple remedy for that is to ask the follow up question: What does that mean to you?/ What does that look like for you? Asking another about love language(s) is useful as a starting point, rather than as a conclusion.
The various styles in which we crave tenderness also begs a bigger conversation about the importance of relying on community for love and support, rather than just one’s primary partner. It can be burdensome, unrealistic, and unsustainable to expect one’s romantic partner to fulfill all of one’s needs. Love languages are relevant not just to the romantic realm, but the platonic and familial realms as well. Communication and expression are requisite for building and maintaining strong relationships while nurturing good mental health. The ways in which we give and receive love impact all relationships, and therefore are worthy of consideration in a much more expanded and thoughtful sense than society currently does.
Contributed by: Maya Hsu
Editor: Jennifer (Ghahari) Smith, Ph.D.
REFERENCES
1 Canavello, A. & Crocker, J. (2010). Creating good relationships: Responsiveness, Relationship Quality, and Interpersonal Goals. Journal of personality and social psychology, 99(1), 78-106. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018186
2 Downs, V. C. & Javidi, M. (2009). Linking communication motives to loneliness in the lives of older adults: An empirical test of interpersonal needs and gratifications. Journal of Applied Communication Research 18(1), 32-48. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909889009360313
3 Yanguas, J., Pinazo-Henandis, S., & Tarazona-Santabalbina, F. J. (2018). The complexity of loneliness. Acta bio-medica: Atenei Parmensis, 89(2), 302-314. https://doi.org/10.23750/abm.v89i2.7404
4 Fetter, A. (2017). It isn’t about your love language; it’s about your partner’s. The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/10/how-the-five-love-languages-gets-misinterpreted/600283/
5 Chapman, G. D. (1995). The five love languages: How to express heartfelt commitment to your mate. Northfield Publishing.
6 Vedantam, S. (Host). (2022). The secret to gift giving [Audio podcast episode]. In Hidden Brain. NPR. https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/the-secret-to-gift-giving/
7 Fetter, A. (2017)
8 Bunt, S. & Hazelwood, Z. J. (2017). Walking the walk, talking the talk: Love languages, self-regulation, and relationship satisfaction. Personal Relationships 24(2), 280-290. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12182