BOOK REVIEW: The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman

Pages:  203

Ideal Reader:  Couples (dating, engaged, married) who wish to enhance or improve their romantic/intimate relationship.  Applicable to all couples regardless of length of relationship, sexual orientation, or relationship makeup.

Ideal Issues Addressed:

• Disconnected from partner
• Spark is gone in the relationship
• Feeling like you and your partner are roomates
• Feeling unloved and unsure why partner says they don’t feel loved.
• Premarital counseling – learn how you and your partner give and receive love best.

Summary:  

One of the central ideas of this book is that love is a choice.  We choose to love others and how we express our love. This choice to love is especially important when the “in love” feeling many of us feel at the beginning of a relationship fades and our emotional need for love requires our partner to make a choice to fill our “Love Tank.”  Chapman explains there are five primary ways that people express and receive love in order to meet the emotional love needs of others and ourselves. Chapman describes these as love languages and uses a language metaphor throughout the book. These languages can be found within all cultures, though appropriate expression varies by culture and couple.  These five love languages include words of affirmation, receiving gifts, acts of service, physical touch, and quality time. Chapman dedicates one chapter to each of the five love languages, where he explains each one in detail. He uses personal reflections and example to benefit the reader’s understanding of the concepts. Each chapter also includes suggestions on how to learn to speak your partner’s primary love language.  Subsequent chapters discuss specific issues in which speaking our partner’s love language may be helpful. He also includes a frequently asked questions section and an assessment to help figure out your own love language profile at the end of the book.

This book is a quick and easy read, written for couples or anyone within a relationship in order for them to learn and use this information without the requirement of outside assistance (ex:  therapists). Some chapters also have discussion or thinking points at the end related to the chapter which allows the reader to apply the information to their own life and engage their partner in a discussion.  While the books is meant to help your relationship without the aid of a third party, this can be difficult work to attempt alone. If you feel more help is required, please reach out to a couples therapist who can help you make the relationship stronger.  YOu are not a failure if you need to reach out, consider it an expression of love when doing so.

How it can Help:

• Learn five ways to express love to others
• Find out your own and your partner’s love language.
• Discussion questions for each chapter guide a discussion between you and your partner, allowing for re-connection before practicing the information in the book.
• Exercises and tips available to help you get started in speaking each other’s love language and strengthening the love in your relationship.
• Provides guidelines for love and marriage (non-intentionally).

Therapist’s Reflections:

This is a book I had sitting on my bookshelf for much longer than I’d like to admit.  I’d been putting it off to favor of reading other books that would enhance my therapeutic practice.  It wasn’t until I had several couples come in, and I found myself recommending this book and its ideas in session that I finally buckled down and read it.  I was surprised at how informative it was, while still being a quick and easy read; always a plus for books when you recommend them to clients. Not only did it explain the concepts in easy to ready terms, it also provided tips and exercises to help enhance learning and speaking your partner’s love language.  Some of the concepts seem cheesy or silly, but I really do feel they are useful. The information in this book has become a staple in my work with couples and had even bled into my work with families and individuals as well. I commonly start with talking about the five love languages with couples as I feel if partners feel more loved by each other, it will make discussions of even harder topics more manageable.  When people feel more loved, they are less likely to be defensive, be more open minded, more forgiving, and better able to come to an understanding. Also, we all have a need to feel loved, and it is within intimate relationships that we find the greatest potential for this love need to be fulfilled.