Are Love Languages Real?

Are Love Languages Real?

In couples therapy the concept of “love languages” from the book The 5 Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate (G. Chapman, 1992) has become a popular way for clients to understand their patterns of communicating in relationships. Simply stated, the critical component proposed in Chapman’s book is that people, for a myriad of reasons, have differences and predispositions, in the way that they experience love and affection. For example, some might desire physical touch, such as a hug or sex, as a preferred way of getting and transmitting the feeling of love and affection, whereas another might like words of affirmation, like complements or “I love you” as a means of expressing love. The importance of recognizing these differences according to Chapman, is that the intent of the message might be lost if the mechanisms for expressing love differ between partners. These differences can result in ineffective patterns of relating where partners are repeatedly attempting to give love and affection in ways that they prefer to receive love and affection, which can result in feeling misunderstood. Instead, Chapman suggests partners learn to recognize and offer love in the way that their partner wants to receive.

Interestingly, Chapman has sold over 11 million copies of his book, has treated couples, spoken at conferences and on radio shows as a subject matter expert, and Gary Chapman is a Baptist pastor with a degree in anthropology from Wheaton College and a post graduate degree in adult education from a Baptist theological seminary. His framework in his book was apparently developed through his work with couples in the context of his ministry and he has no formal training as a therapist, nor education and training as a couple and family therapist. Why is this important? It is important to recognize and highlight the limited utility of the love languages as a model for couple treatment. The book does an excellent job of explaining and educating readers on the idea that individuals might differ in their “love languages” and for some, this understanding is illuminating and motivating and inevitably helpful.  However, it is important to recognize and appreciate, that the propositions of Chapman’s love languages are not empirically tested and verified facts derived from well-designed scientific studies based on a sound theoretical, conceptual foundation of practice.  Rather, the love languages are an anecdotal proposition, based on work as a pastor. E. Impett, H. G. Park, A. Muse (2024) completed an empirical review of the research on love languages.  Their findings confirm that there is a paucity of science and scholarship to test the validity and reliability of the concept of love languages. The authors therefore suggest that lay theories that lack empirical foundations and are proliferated in the public sphere must be critically evaluated in terms of their legitimacy and utility. The authors further state that there are 3 untested assumptions that can be misleading due to oversimplifying and categorizing people in rigid and/or limited ways. Those assumptions include that in fact (1) every person does have an identifiable primary love language; (2) that there are 5 love languages; and (3) that “speaking” the same love language leads to greater relationship quality.

In practice, the conversation in therapy is often not an academic one where clients are “educated” on a particular concept. Rather, couple therapy focuses attention on the patterns of interaction that prevent couples from giving and receiving love in ways that are meaningful to them and enable them to experience the closeness and connection they desire. Many couples are stuck in relational dynamics that are characterized by defensiveness, anger, feelings of being disrespected and undervalued resulting in withholding love, compassion and generosity as well as an inability to access vulnerability. If couples can be helped to access the generosity required to be other-focused and provide that particular style of affection to their partner only and simply because their partner desires it, the couple can begin to feel loved and cared for which enables them to behave in less defensive and more loving ways. The sticking point for couples is not typically their awareness that their partner wants something different that they are getting in the relationship. Typically, each partner is well aware that they both are feeling “mistreated” and “misunderstood” by the other. Rather, the challenge is accessing their willingness to change and compassionately caretake. Clients who are more focused on what they are not getting rather than how they give will inevitably find themselves in power struggles that seem futile and irreparably stuck. When this is the case, and clients are self-focused, defensive and self-protective, no amount of education on languages of love is going to create sustained change.

I recently had a conversation with a couple and it went much like it usually does though there was one unique thought that came from this conversation. The client reported that his preference for his “love language” had changed. The male partner, in his youth, had different preferences for affection. The client also currently had different preferences in other relationships. He stated that he used to be much more physically affectionate. He would like giving and receiving hugs and physical touch, and with friends, he perceived himself to be much more physically demonstrative. In his marriage, however, he resisted physical touch, which, not shockingly, is the exact method of affection his wife most preferred.

This was interesting. The most likely hypothesis is that the husband had over time modified his preferences, due to a power struggle in the relationship where the couple had difficulty influencing the other to get what they need and so they withhold from the other what they perceived that the other needed. This dynamic likely was not created in malice but rather developed naturally by each being more focused defensively, on their wants and needs, rather than the other’s. This dynamic, though common in couples, can lead to frustration, anger, resentment, and distance and impacts the individual’s ability to be generous and focused on their partner’s needs. Though this pattern of behavior might not be conscious or intentional, it is a voluntary choice. From this conceptual lens, the love languages can be a barrier. It is much easier to say that one doesn’t give hugs because it is “not their thing” – not their love language”, rather than being able to acknowledge that each won’t give hugs because there are in a power struggle, and they will not give what the other wants.

It is likely that individuals can give and receive many of the 5 love languages as they all exist on a spectrum. We would argue that there is much more voluntary choice in the ability of partners to give and receive love in a myriad of ways though that is not something that couples readily recognize and accept. Is it possibly for someone to develop a new skillset and new desires for affection if the context supported it? Is it that people are just born with certain love preferences or is it trained, and can it be untrained if that would be more effective in the relationship? It is the professional opinion of this author, that love languages do not exist. There is no biological or chemical composition that predisposes one person to prefer hugs and another to prefer words. These preferences are learned and as they are learned they can be altered, like any pattern or behavior. If it helps the client to learn that he or she has been making efforts in the wrong direction and can now redirect their efforts to more effectively hit their target, then that is an unequivocal good thing. If a client uses the love languages as a diagnosis of their limitations and inability to give or receive a particular gesture of affection and thus maintain a power struggle, then it is unproductive and needs to be challenged if change is to occur.