*Photo of Brett and Beatriz Burbank, provided by Remi Stoneman Photography
Written by Aubrey-Dawn Palmer
With Valentine’s Day approaching, we want to teach about Gary Chapman’s five love languages. Many of you already know about love languages, and know what yours are. We are going to be reviewing each of the five love languages over February. This month, we have one goal, and we want you to join us in that goal. For us here at Healthy Humans Project, February is about learning to love our partners their way.
What does that mean?
It is so easy to express love to our partners the way we want to receive love – in a way that is comfortable to us. But are we really loving our partners the way they need us to? While our intentions are good, it may be that we are not loving our partner according to their love language, and therefore, they are not really feeling loved.
A person’s top two love languages are their most important. These love languages are: physical touch, quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, and gifts. I am not going to go into how each of the five languages work right now, so stay tuned, because we will go through all of them this month!
If you have not taken the test, or, if it has been a while, you can take it here.
We have homework for you, and it doubles as a date night:
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Guess what your partner’s top two love languages are.
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Each of you take the test using the link above (do not help each other).
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Talk about your results. Be positive. (This is not a blaming game!)
Good luck! Tell us about your results, and as always, contact us with any questions.
References
Bland, A. M., & McQueen, K. S. (2018). The distribution of Chapman’s love languages in couples: An exploratory cluster analysis. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 7(2), 103–126. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1037/cfp0000102
Bunt, S., & Hazelwood, Z. J. (2017). Walking the walk, talking the talk: Love languages, self‐regulation, and relationship satisfaction. Personal Relationships, 24(2), 280–290. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1111/pere.12182
Gawda, B. (2019). The structure of the concepts related to love spectrum: Emotional verbal fluency technique application, initial psychometrics, and its validation. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 48(6), 1339–1361. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1007/s10936-019-09661-y
Robinson, M. D., Persich, M. R., Sjoblom-Schmidt, S., & Penzel, I. B. (2020). Love stories: How language use patterns vary by relationship quality. Discourse Processes, 57(1), 81–98. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1080/0163853X.2019.1627158
Aubrey-Dawn Palmer was born and raised in Farmington, New Mexico, and she has a bachelor’s degree in family studies from Brigham Young University. She has two younger brothers and is married to her best friend, Richard. In addition to her research on relationships, human attachment, and healthy sexuality, Aubrey-Dawn volunteers with her husband as a teacher for the Strengthening Families Program, is a research director for a counseling center, and works as a home counselor at a residential treatment center.
