The 5 Love Languages (Book Summary)
The Secret To Love That Lasts
What are the things that make love vanish after the wedding?
On a flight between Dallas and Buffalo, a man approached the author and asked for clarification on why his three marriages failed. He is a successful and intelligent man, yet he can’t seem to understand why his love for his spouse vanished some years after marriage.
He blamed his wife’s complete devotion to their baby as the cause of the first marriage’s failure. The second marriage failed from the start and only lasted for 3 years. The third marriage failed because his wife kept nagging and attacking his personality. He wanted to know what happens to love after marriage, and how couples keep love alive to prevent divorce. This is the same question that several people are asking nowadays.
We desire romantic love in our marriage because it is deeply ingrained in our psychological makeup. There are several articles, books, TV, and radio shows on this serious issue. With all these available resources, how come most couples still haven’t found the secret to keeping love alive after the wedding?
This book has a purpose which is to provide answers to those questions. Most of the available resources are beneficial but we seem to have overlooked one major truth — we speak different love languages.
Most of us grew up speaking the language that we learned from our family — our native tongue or primary language. Later on, some people put effort into learning another language, which becomes a secondary language. We are often comfortable speaking our primary language. If we meet a person speaking another language, communication barriers pop up.
We must be willing to learn our spouse’s primary love language if we are to be effective communicators of love.
Language differences are the main part of human culture. To communicate effectively across any cultural line, we need to learn the language of the person involved. The same thing applies to love. The language of your partner and your emotional love language might differ like English and French. Therefore, we need to learn and speak the primary love language of our partner to communicate effectively about love to them.
With over 30 years spent in marriage counseling, the author discovered that there are five basic emotional love languages. This means that the key to a long-lasting, loving marriage is to speak the one that your partner understands.
It is vital to know the kind of love important to our emotional wellbeing
In the English Language, love is the most confusing and most important word. Several religious and secular thinkers agree that love has a vital role in life. Psychologists have established that the desire to feel loved is a basic human emotional need.
Love.
We use this word when talking about our favorite food, objects, animals, or loved ones. The author, Dr. Chapman focuses on the kind of love that is vital to our emotional health in this book.
A child needs to feel wanted and loved to grow into a responsible adult. If that emotional need isn’t met and the “love tank” is empty, the child will misbehave, because he or she is lacking socially and emotionally.
Take the case of 13-year-old Ashley. Her parents were extremely disappointed that she contracted a sexually transmitted disease, so they complained to Dr. Chapman. When he spoke with Ashley, he realized that she was sleeping with a boy at school because she didn’t feel loved by her divorced parents. Even though her mom and stepdad met her physical needs, they weren’t speaking her primary love language, and she was struggling emotionally.
The emotional need for love isn’t restricted to just childhood, it follows us into adulthood and marriage. We often use “in love” experience as a quick fix for our emotional needs — this has a predictable and limited lifespan. So, our emotional need for love pops up again after we come down from the high of the “in love” obsession.
At the heart of the human’s existence is the desire to be loved and close to another. Marriage was designed to fulfill that need for love and intimacy. The secret pains that most married couples share with the author is enough proof that adults also have “love tanks”. Maintaining the emotional love tank in a marriage is as important as maintaining the oil level in your car.
The experience of “falling in love” is a confusing phenomenon
Many people get married because of the “in love” experience — they meet a person with personality traits and physical features that set off their “love alert” system. This is what makes us get to know a person.
Sometimes the tingles do not last for more than a date. Other times it does, and we start saying “I am falling in love”. We become emotionally obsessed with the person at the peak of the “in love” experience. We ignore any flaws or faults — the beloved is perfect.
Before marriage, most people dream of marital bliss — keeping each other happy. We have been made to believe that marriage will last forever if the couple is really in love.
Unfortunately, that is a myth. Long-range studies were done by psychologist Dorothy Tennov on the in-love phenomenon. She found that romantic obsession doesn’t last longer than 2 years. Once this period is over, close lovers can become enemies and fight over every small thing.
It is a good thing that the emotional obsession doesn’t last long. Otherwise, the whole world would have been in tumult. Because people who are “in love” do not do anything else — they focus solely on making their lover happy.
As the illusion of intimacy slowly fades, individual thoughts, emotions, desires, and behavior patterns become pronounced. The loving couple starts to fall out of love. Then, they separate, divorce, withdraw, or go off to find a new in-love experience. However, they can choose to put in hard work and learn to love each other in the absence of the euphoric in-love obsession.
According to psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, falling in love is an instinctual part of mating behavior determined by our genetics. This means that we temporarily let go of our egos to increase our chances of sexual pairing required to ensure the survival of the species.
Therefore, emotional obsession is an introduction to marriage. The kind of love that makes a marriage last is intentional and is known as rational, volitional love. This is good news for couples who have lost in-love feelings. They can choose to keep each other’s emotional love tank full.
Words of Affirmations, build up your partner
Words of appreciation or verbal compliments are powerful ways to communicate love. It is best to use simple and direct affirmative statements like “you look beautiful in that dress”, and “thank you for doing the dishes tonight”. Note that this doesn’t mean using verbal flattery to take advantage of our partner.
It is a fact that we are motivated to do something our partner wants when we get affirming words from them.
Another way to give a verbal compliment is to encourage them because we all have insecurities holding back our full potential. These encouraging words can help us to summon the courage to accomplish our goals.
For instance, Alison had always enjoyed writing, but she couldn’t change from her major in history. After her first baby, she wrote many articles and even submitted one to a magazine. A rejection slip made her give up on submitting her other articles. When her husband, Keith’s encouraging words made her develop an interest in something she has always loved. Today, she has published several articles and she even scored a book contract.
Moving on, the tone of our voice is exceedingly important — your partner wouldn’t accept a sneering voice as an expression of love. We need to talk with kindness and tenderness.
The way we express our desires is also important. By making requests, we are affirming the abilities and worth of our partner. But if we portray our desires as demands, we lose the chance to promote intimacy and bring our spouse closer.
To double the effect of your affirmative words, compliment your partner in front of friends and families, or talk about them positively to someone else. Love poems, paragraphs, and letters are also great because your partner will get to read it many times.
Quality Time means giving them your full attention
Quality time is key to a successful and lasting relationship. This means you hold hands and look at each other when talking.
The thing that makes someone feel loved emotionally is not always what makes another person feel loved emotionally.
Togetherness is the main part of the quality time because two people might be sitting closely in a room, but they might not be automatically together. This is where some couples have problems. A wife cleaning the house while her husband is complaining about his hard day at work is not giving him quality time, because her attention is divided between cleaning and listening to him.
Quality time doesn’t mean spending all the moments looking into each other’s eyes. What matters is the emotions created while together. This can occur while the couple is playing soccer or dancing — the activity is the means of creating a sense of togetherness.
There are many dialects to the language of quality time, one is quality conversations. This involves sharing your desires, thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a calm, uninterrupted manner. Most times when our partner shares a problem with us, they want us to listen and sympathize, instead of speaking and offering advice or possible solutions.
Quality conversations also need self-revelation in addition to sympathetic listening. This is hard for most of us because we were brought up to deny or hide our expression of feelings and thoughts.
Gifts, mean “I was thinking about you” and “this is how much I like you”
Some people see gifts as an expression of love, i.e. love token because gifts are a visual symbol of thought. You have to be thinking about someone to give them a gift.
This is why most weddings involve receiving and giving of rings — a visible and outward sign of a spiritual and inner bond between two hearts in endless love. But, these visual love symbols are more important to some than others. Some people don’t wear wedding rings while others never take it off.
If your partner’s primary love language is receiving gifts, he or she will deeply value wedding rings and wear it with pride. You have to become an expert gift giver. If not, your partner might begin to question your love.
Gifts are one of the easiest ways to express love because they can be made, found, or bought. All you have to do is to keep a note of all the gifts that your spouse has expressed interest in receiving over the years.
To become an expert gift-giver, you need to change your perspective about money especially if you are the saving type. You hardly buy anything for yourself since you would rather save as much as possible. By doing this, you are meeting your need for emotional security and self-worth, instead of your partner’s. To invest in your partner’s emotional love tank, worry less about savings, and give gifts more often.
The gift of presence or self is also important to some people whose primary love language is receiving gifts. Being there for them during a crisis is more important to them than anything else.
Gifts do not have to be expensive, it is the love behind giving that matters, not the monetary value.
Acts of Service means making their life a bit easier
Serving your partner helps you to express your love by doing things. Actions such as mowing the lawn, cleaning the kitchen, bathing the kids, and walking the dog are good examples of acts of service.
When you do some of those things positively, they serve as an expression of love because they require energy effort, time, planning, and thought.
It is important to note that in-love obsession controls our actions and behaviors before marriage. After we get married, we change back to our normal self. This is why a guy that helps out his partner in the kitchen while dating, might not lift a finger to help after marriage — he might feel he doesn’t have to work hard to please her anymore.
For some of us, we need to reexamine our stereotypes about the role of wives and husbands to learn the love language (acts of service). Since there are tremendous advantages to meet the emotional needs of your partner.
For example, a woman once thanked Dr. Chapman for being the one that motivated her husband to change. The wife had always been the one to do all the house chores since they got married 35 years ago. After the seminar, he started volunteering to help out with chores. She couldn’t believe it at first, but he never stopped helping ever since. He was using her love language and her love tank was filled.
Physical Touch, communicating emotional love
Numerous researches done on child development have concluded that infants who are held, kissed and hugged develop into adults with healthier emotions than those with no physical contact for long.
In couples, physical touch allows them to communicate marital love in ways such as kissing, embracing, intercourse, etc. It can make or break a relationship.
But, all touches are not equal. Your partner might enjoy one more than the other, so it is best to ask her what she sees as a loving touch. Don’t assume she will enjoy some touches just because you do.
During a crisis, we need to feel loved, so we instinctively hug one another to communicate love. If the love language of your partner is physical touch, the best thing is to hug her when she cries. She will remember your touches long after the crisis is over.
Some years back, Dr. Chapman had a seminar in West Palm Beach, Florida. Patsy and Pete proposed that he spend the night at their home. The author was thinking this will result in a late-night counseling session. But, he was in for a surprise. The couple did not bring up any issues. They eventually told him their story on the drive to the airport the next day. They had grown up in the same community and attended the same school. They got married and moved to Florida after college.
The initial 3 months were the best while they were setting up their new life. Problems started after six months when Pete started working hard and spending less time with Patsy. After a year, Patsy was miserable so she started seeing a marriage counselor. Pete only agreed to join after three sessions since he believed that he had no problem. After 6 months of counseling, their marriage improved because they learned to speak each other’s love language. Pete’s love language was physical touch while that of Patsy was quality time.
Conclusion
It is essential to know your spouse’s primary love language if you want to keep their love tank full. But, you also discover yours to be able to tell your partner about your desires. Once the love tank of a couple is full, other aspects of their relationship will take care of themselves.
Try this:
To keep the emotional love tank full, learn and use your partner’s primary love language. Write down daily words of affirmation for your spouse and review the list with them on weekends. Spend at least 10 minutes with undivided attention with your partner daily. Take note of your partner’s body language when you talk. Learn to take note of your emotions. If your partner loves receiving gifts, try to make or buy something for them regularly. You could even plant a tree for them in your yard.
Does your partner always ask you to do things for them? Write down a list and start doing those things. Spend some time to discover your love language if you want your needs to be met.
Writer’s notes:
This is a summary of the book The 5 Love Languages by Gary D. Chapman. — These are not his words but rather a re-write of what was taken away from reading the book. Reading this summary will not give you the same feel and impact as reading the full book, so if you liked what you’ve read here, it is recommended to acquire the kindle, audio, or hardcover. This will not only support the author that inspired this post but also allow you to dive into this perspective a bit more.
