"I must accept that my real love language is soothing my fear."
 | By Michal Leibowitz Editorial Assistant |
There is something inescapably hokey about most relationship books, and Gary Chapman's "The Five Love Languages" is no exception. Its chapters have titles like "Keeping the Love Tank Full," and the book describes the loss of initial chemistry with someone as when "the tingles run right out our toes." The cover of the 2015 edition features a young couple embracing on a beach, backlit by the setting sun. |
And yet, Chapman's book, which has sold over 20 million copies since its initial release 30 years ago, has had the kind of longevity and cultural penetration that few books ever achieve. As I write this, it sits atop the hourly-updated Amazon Best Seller list in both the "Marriage" and "Love & Romance" subcategories. Chapman's core concept — that there are five primary ways that people use to give or receive affection — has been referenced everywhere from "The New Yorker" to "The Bachelorette." |
Bruce Feiler noted back in 2011 that "The Five Love Languages" is something of an outlier in the world of popular relationship self-help books. Unlike "Attached," say, or even "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work," Chapman doesn't ground his philosophy in academic research, evolutionary theory or really any kind of "psychological research jargon" (his words). |
Instead, his thesis is based on his observations over the years he's spent as a marriage counselor, years during which he noticed that he was hearing "the same stories over and over again." He realized that when people described what they wanted from their partners, and how they wanted to be loved, most of these desires fell into one of the five categories: physical touch, gifts, words of affirmation, quality time and acts of service. And the couples who were frustrated with each other — those who said they didn't feel loved — were the ones who spoke "different love languages," the husband craving words of affirmation, for example, the wife quality time. |
In her Sunday Review cover story, Lisa Taddeo, the author of "Three Women," quips that she first thought of the love languages as "the astrology of the love world." But even so, and despite its "major gaps," she writes that Chapman's philosophy "is simply, not a dismissible one. What he noticed is that love is not one thing." |
And for Taddeo, her truest love language might be something that never made Chapman's list. |
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