The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate is a 1995 book by Gary Chapman.[1] It outlines five ways to express and experience love that Chapman calls “love languages”:
- receiving gifts,
- quality time,
- words of affirmation,
- acts of service (devotion),
- and physical touch.[2]
Chapman’s book claims that the list of five love languages is exhaustive.[3] [4] According to this theory, each person has one primary and one secondary love language. The official website for the book provides a test for users to try and determine their love languages.
The book has been on the New York Times Best Seller list since August 2009.[5]
Chapman suggests that to discover another person’s love language, one must observe the way they express love to others, analyze what they complain about most often, and what they request from their significant other most often. He theorizes that people tend to naturally give love in the way that they prefer to receive love. It is also possible to find another person’s love language by asking those same questions.
Since 1995, Chapman has written several books related to The Five Love Languages, including The Five Love Languages of Children in 1997 and The Five Love Languages for Singles in 2004.[6] In 2011, Chapman co-authored The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace with Dr. Paul White, applying the 5 Love Languages concepts to work-based relationships.[7] There are also specialty editions of the book such as The Five Love Languages: Military Edition which Chapman co-authored with Jocelyn Green and released in 2013.
There has been a lack of research done to test the validity and generalizibility of Chapman’s model. Egbert (2006) suggests that the Five Love Languages might have some degree of psychometric validity despite its abstract nature.[8]
A new, revised edition of The Five Love Languages was released on January 1, 2015.
