Natalia Buia probably would not date a man if he refused to at least entertain a conversation about love languages. “It’s not a deal breaker per se, but I have gotten into arguments with men on dates over it,” said Buia, who is 35 and lives in Toronto. “If someone thinks love languages are silly or stupid, it means that we don’t see eye-to-eye on communication.”
Buia only recently learned about the five love languages, after leaving a 10-year marriage and re-entering single life. Her friends turned her on to a quiz that purports to tell you how you best receive and express love. It is based on The 5 Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate. The book has sold 20m copies since being published by Gary Chapman in 1992.
This week, however, the Washington Post reported on new research that found there is not enough empirical evidence on love languages to back up their promised effectiveness.
You don’t have to read the book to understand the love language basics. Chapman claims there are five distinct ways to receive and express love: words of affirmation (giving compliments or validation), acts of service (doing something helpful, like taking out the trash), physical touch (PDA, a hug or a kiss), quality time (putting the phones away and being around each other), and gift giving (thoughtful little presents every now and then). Ostensibly, knowing which love languages you and your partner favor will help you talk through disagreements and give each other what you want from a relationship.
Love languages are a staple of first date conversations, an icebreaker that lives somewhere on the spicy scale between “what’s your sign?” and “do you want kids?”. But scientists and cynics alike have long called it an unreliable theory. For one, Chapman is not a psychologist. He’s a longtime Baptist pastor who counselled couples through the church.
In their paper, published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, researchers reviewed all the scientific material published on the concept. They found that most people don’t have a “primary” love language. It’s common to connect with all five options – or even more, as researchers believe that there are more than five categories for expressing love in a “meaningful way”. It also might not matter if you date a fellow gift-giver or physical-toucher: according to the paper, couples who say they “speak” the same love languages do not report higher satisfaction than those who speak separate ones.
Even in light of this paper, love language adherents remain convinced by the theory. Buia compared having a primary love language to a zodiac sign – “you just have it,” she said. “It would be great if this had scientific backing, but it’s not as if we just pulled this thing out of thin air.”
Breanna Walther believes that learning about love languages and attachment styles – another psychology term that entered the pop-cultural lexicon due to a bestselling book – has enriched her relationships. “It’s helped explain to me why I dated certain people, and why it didn’t work out,” said Walther, who is 32 and lives in New York. “Why can’t they just let us have fun with it? If we want to live in our delusions, let us.”
And Sunny Daye, a 27-year-old musician from Houston, Texas, feels similarly unfazed. “All [Chapman] did was put words to things that have been around for ever,” they said. “If you know your partner loves flowers, and you bring home some flowers, that’s gift-giving. I don’t know how you can debunk something like getting your girlfriend flowers.”
But Daye believes that love languages can shift and change as people do. When they first took the quiz at 19, it told them their love language was acts of service. It made sense at the time. “Back then, I was in college, working as a professional photographer, and had a lot of stuff going on, so if you could help my days go smoothly back then, I’d appreciate it,” they said.
A few years later, they took the quiz again. It said their primary love language was words of affirmation. That rang true, too. “I was in a relationship where I was really deprived of that, so it became important to me,” Daye explained. Today, their love language is gift giving: “That will always be a big one for me, because it’s how my family showed love when I was a kid.”
Daye is currently in a relationship, but they say that talking about love languages was “non-negotiable” during their dating days. “If I’m dating someone and I ask them how do they show love and how would they like to receive it, and they say that’s made up, we don’t need to date,” they said. “I’ve stopped dating people because they don’t adhere to my love language.”
For his part, Chapman stands by his theory. “I think the fact that so many millions of people have read the book, so many people have found it to be helpful in their relationship, that I’m convinced it can have a tremendous positive impact on a marriage,” he told the Post.
For Buia, love languages don’t just help to form romantic connections. “I get together with my single friends and we talk about guys who put their love languages in their Tinder or Hinge profiles. We all follow the same meme accounts about this stuff,” she said. “It’s almost a form of community in that way.”
