This is one of the simplest tools around, and yet, quite impressive—and effective—with the insights it can offer a couple
Years ago, Gary Chapman identified five different love languages, and indeed they are ‘languages’ and indeed, there are five different ways people express love. Which also means: it’s how we feel loved. Acts of Service, Quality Time, Physical touch, Receiving gifts, and Words of Affirmation.
If you and your spouse have very different love languages, it can feel like one of you is speaking Arabic and the other is speaking French. Neither ‘language’ is better than the other, they are simply different ways of expressing and of feeling loved.
What’s lovely is anyone can take the quiz online. And it only takes about 10 minutes. 5 Love Language Profiles
I do warn the couples though: the test can be somewhat frustrating to take. You’re given two options to choose from: Would you prefer your sweetheart give you flowers or wrap his or her arm around you? I want both!! Or with other questions, I really wanted neither.
Go with your gut; answer the questions intuitively. It always works.
You get your score instantaneously. Your numbers do matter.
An exercise to do with your partner
Let’s say your partner scored: 12 in Physical touch, 7 in Quality Time, 6 Acts of Service, 4 Words of Affirmation and a 1 in gifting.
And you scored: 7 in Acts of Service, 6 in Words of Affirmation, 6 in Gifts, 6 in Quality Time and a 5 in Touch.
Your partner’s high score—there’s a 5 point gap between his first and second choices—means, that’s his language. Touch.
But for you, he can love you in almost any of the languages and he or she will be successful.
Take your top scores (for him I’d take the top two, and for you, the top 3) and each of you take a few moments to reflect on what kind of Touch or Quality Time or Acts of Service really ring your bell. For instance, he could say: I really love it when you scratch my head or cuddle with me any time. I’m not as excited about hand-holding or a massage.
You could say: Oh boy. Please do the dishes and clean the kitchen in the evenings and run the kids to all of their weekend activities. Mowing the lawn or vacuuming, nah, those don’t do as much for me.
You get the picture. Personalize which Acts of Service, what sort of Gifting or Touch or Quality Time, what sort of Words of Affirmation really touch you; and let your partner know.
Once you do know, please do your best to speak your partner’s love language.
Frequently…which will lead to fluency.