I've been curious about this book since a friend gushed over it about a year ago. It seemed a little self-helpy to me, and my library catalog attaches it to Christianity. Also, I'm not sure what marriage I'm working on. But.
It seemed pretty self-evident to me that there are different ways to express love, and that some expressions of love mean more to different people. So I picked it up, and spent an afternoon with it and a glass of iced tea.
Here are the five love languages:
- Words of Affirmation
- Quality Time
- Gifts
- Acts of Service
- Physical Touch
Okay, fine. I get that. What I found most interesting was the relative ease and difficulty of figuring out the dominant love languages of those around me. My mom was immediately obvious, and it threw a lot of areas of our family dynamic into sharp relief. My dad was harder. Some friends became clear just as they popped into my head over the past few days, as I'd be thinking about other things. What frightens me is that I look at my past romantic relationships, and I can't say for sure what my partners' languages have been. Even more so, I can't figure out my own. He offers lots of tips for figuring it out, but all I really got to was that one of the five is definitely not mine. (This one, by the way, happens to be my mom's, which I find amusing.) So I'm still puzzling that out. (Chapman has an edition for singles, which might be worth digging up.)
What I have thought about is that I can show love and appreciation in my relationship through all these ways, and that I should, in order to really ensure the people around me know that I appreciate them. It has also been a good reminder that they show their appreciation and love in different ways too. Sometimes, when you're convinced love looks a certain way, you miss the love that's right in front of you.
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