The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman outlines the five main ways that we show love and receive love. The practical implications for marriage relationships are spelled out with examples.

If you want to communicate love for your spouse, you need to understand how they receive love.

Gary Chapman presents answers to questions we frequently ask about affection between genders. His opinion is that every relational disagreement is caused through ignorance or lack of adequate communication about what he calls the love languages. The five love languages are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.

Our understanding of love languages for our partner and ourselves will fill the void by erasing emotional distance. On this journey, we will discover relationship issues, their roots, and the most probable solutions. We will also likely determine the answers to our hidden questions about the behavior of the opposite sex.

In this summary, you will learn:

  • the five love languages and how to demonstrate them;
  • common misunderstandings in marriages that make relationships difficult; and
  • how to revive love and romance in marriage.

Difficulties in marriages often stem directly from a lack of understanding one another’s love language.

During courtship, lovers overcome by the emotions of being in love fall under the illusion that they were perfectly made for each other. But after marriage, as they live with each other, they begin to see each other’s flaws. The desire for romantic love begins to decrease when they get this new perspective on the personality of their spouse.

The multiple causes of marital conflict range from domestic chores to personal attacks or from the fading of physical beauty over time to the simple absence of trust that leads to asking irrelevant questions. Magazines, newspapers, journals, blogs, and the music industry explore this phenomenon but don’t deal with the underlying animosity or the issue of divorce in society.

The author explains how to effectively communicate love, as he discovers that the major problems with interaction have a simple cause: The lovers fail to understand their primary love languages and the love languages of their partners. Lovers must communicate in the love language of their spouse to generate intimacy. This is what bridges the emotional distance in the marriage.

We understand that languages are specific to cultures. In the same way, each lover has a specific primary and secondary love language. Without understanding their primary language, we cannot bridge the problems to achieve peace in our marriage. Understanding love languages remove our limited view of love assessments and let us see past the mask each of us wears.

A man who had not found happiness in three consecutive marriages spoke to a marriage counselor about what happens after marriage. His first marriage collapsed because he felt his wife gave all her attention to their child. The second marriage was a disaster from the beginning, even though it was wonderful while dating. Even on their honeymoon, they had a lot of problems. He thought the third marriage would be different because of the wealth of experience he gained in the first two marriages.

On the contrary, even though they dated for two years, the third marriage fell apart due to a lack of trust and his inability to help out at home. It was all a great waste. We can see through this that there are huge challenges in marriages. Usually, the husband and wife have different emotional love languages, and they often don’t understand how to communicate with each other even if they do share a common love language.

The emotions of being in love should be differentiated from real love.

Love can lead to obsession if it is not adequately managed. This is what Chapman refers to as the “in-love” experience, in which emotional conflict leads to falling in love. This result leads the opposite sex to the belief that everything is perfect about the coming union. The author tells the story of Janice, who dated a lot of men for years, but would break up with them when they were not able to electrify her emotions. But then David won over her feelings through the act of falling in love with her. Janice was convinced after three weeks that things were perfect and their marriage would be bliss, even though David had already been through two unsuccessful marriages. Consider how powerful a role emotions played in this story and how they affected decisions.

In this kind of love, the illusion of intimacy is created by a temporary flow of emotions. In time, these emotions evaporate, and both people begin to display their real imperfections. The psychologist Dr. Dorothy Tennov shares that the average duration of perfect romantic emotion is about two years. If secret affairs generate emotions, they may last a little longer. This is not real love but is instead a vague emotion called “limerence.” These emotions are questionable because they are not consciously determined. They come effortlessly and produce no motivation toward personal growth. This suggests that the foundation of these emotions is created through selfish behavior by one of the persons involved.

Dr. Chapman examines the complexities of love and how they apply to our daily activities. He also expounds on the kind of love that produces intimacy between the sexes. He believes that we can go to any lengths for love if that love is based on rational reasons. True love can inspire us to take significant risks, even producing extreme mental states. The human desire for affection is due to an “empty tank” inside. When this empty tank is filled with rational emotions, it produces wonderful displays of affection between spouses. This true love requires discipline, dedication, and continual work toward improvement.

The innate need to love or be loved is a primary human emotional need. We make decisions, take risks, and endure various trials in the name of love. The apostle Paul viewed love as the greatest principle and commitment. He noticed in 1 Corinthians 13 how love uniquely stands out among the triad of virtues of faith, hope, and love. 

Love has different aspects and different objects of affection. A man can love both his parents and his wife, but there are significant differences in his love of each. The love that brings a man and woman together is frequently a solution to emotional health. 

Each growing child has a blank emotional slate that can be written upon. The degree to which this emotional slate remains blank can create emotional turbulence and possibly psychological problems. Sometimes when someone has an almost completely blank emotional slate, they express their emotional need for love through physical and sexual connections…

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