The Five Love Languages

The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate is a 1992 nonfiction book by Baptist minister Gary Chapman. It outlines five general ways that romantic partners express and experience love, which Chapman calls "love languages".

Summary
According to Chapman, the five "love languages" are:
 * words of affirmation (compliments)
 * quality time
 * gifts
 * acts of service
 * physical touch

Examples are given from his counseling practice, as well as questions to help determine one's own love languages. According to Chapman's theory, each person has one primary and one secondary love language.

Chapman suggests that to discover another person's love language, one must observe the way they express love to others, and analyze what they complain about most often and what they request from their significant other most often. He theorizes that people tend to naturally give love in the way that they prefer to receive love, and better communication between couples can be accomplished when one can demonstrate caring to the other person in the love language the recipient understands.

An example would be: if a husband's love language is acts of service, he may be confused when he does the laundry and his wife does not perceive that as an act of love, viewing it as simply performing household duties, because the love language she comprehends is words of affirmation (verbal affirmation that he loves her). She may try to use what she values, words of affirmation, to express her love to him, which he would not value as much as she does. If she understands his love language and mows the lawn for him, he perceives it in his love language as an act of expressing her love for him; likewise, if he tells her he loves her, she values that as an act of love.

Commercial
The book sold 8,500 copies in its first year, four times what the publisher expected. The following year it sold 17,000, and two years later, 137,000. it had spent 297 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Scientific
Scientific studies on the validity of love languages have yielded mixed or inconclusive results, with much research leaning toward refuting the concept. Psychologist Julie Schwartz Gottman has cast doubt on the concept of a "primary" love language and the usefulness of insisting on showing or receiving love in only one way. A 2006 confirmatory factor analysis study by Nicole Egbert and Denise Polk suggests that the five love languages may have some degree of psychometric validity.

A 2017 study published in Personal Relationships involving 67 heterosexual couples found limited evidence that synchronized love languages correlated with relationship satisfaction. Moreover, a 2024 study by Emily Impett et al., published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, refutes Chapman's claims by arguing that there are more than five ways to express love, people do not have a "primary" love language, and relationships do not suffer when partners have different love languages.

Related works
Since 1992, Chapman has written several books related to The Five Love Languages, including The Five Love Languages of Children in 1997 and The Five Love Languages for Singles in 2004. In 2011, Chapman co-authored The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace with Dr. Paul White, applying the 5 Love Languages concepts to work-based relationships. There are also special editions of the book, such as The Five Love Languages Military Edition (2013) which Chapman co-authored with Jocelyn Green.