The Languages of Love

In therapy the other day I was talking to my therapist about the idea of the Five Love Languages.  If you haven't heard of it, basically it's a way to describe how we communicate to and with our significant others.  From what my therapist told me, it's a pretty solid concept that's been monetized into a schmaltzy book series with a heavy religious push, but I'm just focusing on the concept for now.

Essentially the theory is that each of us has a particular "love language" and respond best when our significant other communicates with us in that particular love language.  Lapses come when we try to communicate with our partner in our love language and unknowingly ignore what their love language is. That's a really clunky description but hopefully it makes sense.

The five languages are pretty self-explanatory: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Gifts, and Quality Time.

I'm not usually one to latch onto fad concepts like this but I did find some truth in it for Rob and I.  I knew right away that my primary "language" according to this concept was Words of Affirmation.  Nothing makes me happier than when Robbie tells me he loves me, or can't wait to see me again, or is proud of me.  In turn, I tend to flood Rob with Words of Affirmation despite the fact that it doesn't really seem to affect him in the same way that it affects me, because I assume that it'll make him feel loved.

Lesson: Don't try to communicate with him when he's sleeping.

We took a quiz together and turns out that my languages are "Words of Affirmation" (bingo) and "Quality Time," basically spending time one-on-one doing anything and everything.  Robbie's results were more or less what I expected--Quality Time and Physical Touch.  I love that we share one language, especially because it helps to explain why we're happier spending time alone doing nothing than out and about with others.  

Anyway I'm not trying to push this concept or the book; really I just wanted to share it with you because it's something I've been giving a lot of thought to of late and I think it's already affected to some extent how I communicate with Rob.  Just goes to show that there's always something new to learn about yourself and your partner.

If you're interested in taking the quiz, this is the one we took. I'm not sure it's particularly well-crafted, it seems to fixture mostly on the Gifts language, but our results were pretty correct I think.

Have you ever read anything about this concept? Does it seem truthful or nonsensical?