What you think you know about relationships could be incorrect. It isn't totally your fault, though. Overreliance on our own (limited) expertise or well-intentioned counsel from others is frequently the issue. Even when we strive to find reliable information in popular relationship books, it's difficult to tell how much of what we read is backed up by scientific evidence. Take, for example, The 5 Love Languages, one of the most widely read books on love (Chapman, 2010).
What Are the Different Love Languages?
Gifts (e.g., surprising them with a present), words of affirmation (e.g., giving them compliments), quality time (e.g., intently listening to them), acts of service (e.g., running errands for them), and physical touch (e.g., hugging them) are the five key ways we express love, according to the 5 Love Languages (Egbert & Polk, 2006). While you can offer your partner love in any of the five "languages," according to Chapman, you have one predominant or dominant style. According to a recent study, the most desired love language is time (40.8%), followed by touch (40.0%), words (22.7%), service (13.6%), and presents (13.6%). (4.0 percent ) Hughes and Camden (Hughes & Camden, 2020)
You may, for example, place a high value on service. As a result, you show your affection for your partner by making a meal for them or cleaning up around the house. If service is your primary love language, you'll want your spouse to reciprocate with acts of service as a demonstration of their affection for you. How often do they look for methods to assist you? According to the book, a relationship will run more easily and be of higher quality if both partners speak the same dominant love language. That is, it makes no difference whose language you speak (e.g., time, touch, words, etc. ), as long as you're both on the same page.However, if your languages are incompatible, it will be difficult for you to relate to and comprehend each other, putting your relationship at risk. Allegedly.
Do Different Love Languages Have an Impact on Relationships?
The story of love languages is entertaining. They're straightforward, intuitive, and simple to apply. The trouble is that they're almost certainly inaccurate.
To begin, it's worth noting that love languages haven't been extensively researched. Two early dissertations, on the other hand, looked into how knowing your partner's love language might affect relationship satisfaction (Thatcher, 2004; Veale, 2006). Neither study found that it was beneficial. Not only did understanding the partner's primary love language not correlate with greater relationship pleasure at the time, but it also did not correlate with greater relationship satisfaction three weeks afterwards (Veale, 2006).
However, understanding your partner's language may not be sufficient. It's possible that you'll need to be matched. Two Australian researchers investigated if partners who spoke the same love language had stronger relationships (Bunt et al., 2007). They gathered heterosexual couples in their mid-twenties and had each individual fill out a questionnaire about their relationship satisfaction and love styles (for example, "I usually communicate my feelings by doing errands for her/him"). Researchers assessed each partner's primary love language based on which of the five languages got the greatest score, following Chapman's advice. Researchers then compared spouses to see if their primary love languages were similar.(e.g., both rated touch as the best or both rated service as the best) or mismatched (e.g., both rated touch as the best or both rated service as the best) (e.g., one person had touch as their primary, while the other person had time).
Those who have their love languages aligned, according to Chapman, should have better relationships. This, however, was not the case. Couples with mismatched love languages had just as excellent a relationship as those who were matched. You could argue that it's not simply congruence that matters, but that knowing what your spouse values in terms of love has its own set of advantages. In fact, the majority of people were quite excellent at it, with three out of four people (76%) able to effectively read their partner's love language. However, there was no evidence that this knowledge helped them have a more satisfying relationship, according to the researchers.
More recently, research looked at the love language each couple desired, what they supplied, and what they received as part of the matching process (Polk & Egbert, 2013). There were three possible outcomes when using this method: matched (both partners obtained their desired love language), mismatched (neither partner received their ideal love language), and partial match (one partner received their preferred love language but the other did not). The matched couples should have the best relationship quality, according to the Love Language theory.The researchers, on the other hand, discovered no distinction between couple types. To put it another way, the data do not support the notion that love languages are significant in partnerships.
Despite the fact that most research contradicts the Love Language idea, a study published in 2020 found partial evidence (Hughes & Camden, 2020). In a survey of over a thousand adults in the United States, more than half said their partner was good at using their favorite love language. Participants reported higher levels of contentment and affection in their relationships when they believed their partners utilized their chosen love language.