Five Love Languages
At a “Daddy’s Day” at my son’s school one of the speakers recommended a book called “The Five Languages” by Gary Chapman.
If you haven’t read it, you should. The theory is that people display/accept love in 5 basic ways (although there are “dialects” with each language) which are:
- Words of Affirmation: Such as saying I love you or thanking someone.
- Quality Time: Time really paying attention to each other.
- Recieving Gifts: These can be homemade stuff as well
- Acts of Service: Doing stuff for your loved one.
- Physical Touch: Everything from holding hands to sex.
Okay, I know it sounds kind of odd but after reading the book, I am really starting to agree with it. See the theory is that a person feels love a certain way, and it’s often the way we display love as well. After the “honeymoon” period of a relationship, we start to calm down and that’s when we can start feeling unloved in the relationship because we aren’t speaking the same “language.” The book talks about ways to understand what your language is and to recognize what your significant other’s language is as well.
My wife and I both read the book and realised that we were “speaking” completely different languages, hers is acts of service and mine is a combination of words of affirmation and physical touch. The past few weeks since we read it has been great and I’m looking forward to the future. I would recommend it to anyone, whether married or just dating.
It also comes in an unabridged CD version which is really handy while driving to work. There is also a guys edition because I guess we need a little extra help.
(Okay, so this was a sales pitch post, but it’s a really good book.)