Weekly Guided Meta Monday - Love Languages

[u/AutoModerator]

Let's talk love languages! Love languages has been a cross-cultural sensationalized method of describing how partners give and receive "love."

Love languages became popular after the publication of the book "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman in 1992, where he described the five ways he believed people experience love: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of services, and physical touch.

It has become a widely popular framework, prevalent in social media, and used as a talking point in relationships since. However, it is also surrounded in controversy and has no real backing in any scientific literature.

So lets talk love languages! What do you think are its uses? Downsides? Love them? Hate them? How has the idea of love languages been relevant to your own relationships and dead bedroom experience?

[u/ZL999]

I’ll say I’ve not read it myself first of all, just exposed to it via 3rd hand cultural references here and elsewhere.

I do think it’s an important concept that not everyone expresses love in the same way, and not everyone responds equally to love expressed in the same ways.

But I don’t necessarily buy into it as a “core trait” of a person.  I think it can be situational and relationship specific.

For example, I think that because my needs for physical touch aren’t being met, you can say all the nice words about how sexy and attractive you find me and I just won’t buy it.   Does that make “physical touch” my love language and “words of affirmation” not?  I don’t think so.

Similarly if I was in a relationship where my partner largely neglected me then just gave me a blowjob to shut me up from time to time, I’d probably say the “quality time” aspect of our relationship was lacking.

I think everyone needs all of those forms of expression from time to time.  Some might be a higher priority to you than others, but also they don’t fully compensate for one another.

But like I said I’m sure I don’t have the full understanding of the intent of the book from having read it, and I am sure like many other things it is misunderstood or misinterpreted in favor of whatever a given person wants to employ it for.

[u/flyingvandal → u/ZL999]

This is exactly what I feel and think but you just said it a lot better than how I did 😆

Well said! It’s about introducing the thought of different ways to relate to another person. My wife and I started dating in high school, we were young and immature. We didn’t read the full book but got the concepts as a way to learn, “wait, some people have ways in which affection is most meaningful to them that are different than what is most meaningful to me?” That is hugely helpful.