Revisiting the love languages

We’ve already revisited the love languages once back in episode 240, but today we’re taking a critical look at them to discuss whether or not they're actually as important as we make them out to be. We're going to go over some of the key assumptions behind the love languages and of course, look at what the research has to say. And finally, we discuss both the potential benefits and the possible pitfalls of relying too heavily on the love languages as a framework.

In this episode, we’re going over some pros of love languages and research behind them:

• They get people to even start thinking about communicating more effectively and realizing they may need to adjust their love language/ask their partner to adjust theirs.

• Nichole Egbert & Denise Polk (2006) Speaking the Language of Relational Maintenance: A Validity Test of Chapman's Five Love Languages, Communication Research Reports:

• Found that love languages seem to match up with relationship maintenance behaviors that other researchers have identified. 

• Theorize that they may be the way that people communicate the intentions behind their behavior to a partner.

• Mostova O, Stolarski M, Matthews G (2022) I love the way you love me: Responding to partner’s love language preferences boosts satisfaction in romantic heterosexual couples. PLOS Public LIbrary of Science ONE:

• Found that matching on love languages is associated with higher relationship and sexual satisfaction.

On the other hand, we should be critical of the love languages and the man who came up with them, Dr. Gary Chapman. The research that supports this theory, while it exists, is still lacking. There are also some assumptions made with the model and they aren’t always right.

These assumptions mainly come from a literature review by Impett, E.A., Park, H.G., & Muise, A. (2024). Popular Psychology Through a Scientific Lens: Evaluating Love Languages From a Relationship Science Perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Assumption #1: Everyone has one primary love language.

• Studies have consistently demonstrated that people tend to endorse all five love languages as meaningful ways of expressing love and feeling loved.

• When people take tests in other formats than Chapman’s quiz, the results do not match up.

Assumption #2: There are 5 love languages.

• Research on relationship maintenance that has used a similar approach has identified seven distinct relationship maintenance behaviors, some of which overlap with Chapman’s, but others that are not captured in the love languages, such as integrating a partner into one’s broader social network and developing effective strategies to manage conflict. It is plausible that Chapman’s oversight in recognizing these behaviors as meaningful expressions of love may stem from his reliance on a homogenous sample of couples who are all married, religious, and mixed gender and likely share traditional values.

Assumption #3: “Speaking” the same love language leads to greater relationship quality.

• These authors argue that studies that have found that people report higher relationship satisfaction when their love languages match have not done enough to distinguish this and highlight it as the primary variable. They suspect that this could be the result of partners who express love regularly in any shape or form. 

• Recent research reveals that expressions of all love languages were positively associated with relationship satisfaction regardless of a person’s preference, with very little evidence of matching effects.

Dr. Gary Chapman’s evidence for his five love languages is also purely anecdotal and from his experience as a Christian pastor working with clients. His education is also in theology, anthropology, and adult education, and so much of his theory is also based on personal experience.

“[The love language theory] assumes that people don’t have the capacity to learn different ways to express love.”

-Julie Gottman

A few other critiques of the love languages we discuss during this episodes are:

• Fluidity of love: we may all want all of the love languages. We may want some languages more than others during different seasons of life. Different relationships and different partners may make us acutely aware of what type of expressions of love we crave in that particular relationship.

• They can encourage reductive thinking about what makes or breaks relationships

• This framework can promote a kind of rigidity, or cause us to get caught up in labels.

• Can be used as a means for making demands.

Regardless of whether or not you’ve had positive experiences with the love languages, it’s worth examining them objectively and critically so we’re not relying on them too heavily.