there are five different ways to show love: physical affection, words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, and gifts. These are the five love languages. We each preference a language or two, meaning we’re more likely to communicate our love for people in one or two particular languages (e.g., by saying the words “I love you,” by hugging, by doing the dishes, etc.) than we are to love people equally with all five. In return, we’re each more likely to notice love that is shown to us in a love language we prefer. In other words, we’re a little dense.
For example, if I’m an acts of service lover, then you may literally be saying to me “I love you” every single time we see each other—”How are you? I love you. For dinner, can we have pizza salad? I love you”—but if you’re not doing acts of service for me, I may still not feel loved. Irrational, you might say. You are loved. Nevertheless.
The love languages theory is useful but not perfect. For instance, just about everybody I know hears the theory and then says, “Wait—I think I’m all of the love languages.” Truer than not, I’d wager. But the love languages guy does have a point: for some reason—both nature and nurture, I’d guess—we like to be told we’re loved in some ways more than others. This turns out to matter.
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