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You may have heard of Gary Chapman’s best-selling book, The 5 Love Languages. I personally have read it several times and learn something new every time! I especially re-read it to remind myself of the ways I can better love my husband through his love language.
After re-reading and re-taking the quiz a couple of times, I noticed my love language shifting and changing a bit. Okay, Okay, what? I know you’re thinking, what in the world is a love language? Let’s start here before I get ahead of myself.
What’s the Use?
The purpose of The 5 Love Languages is to determine your love language (and possibly that of your spouses) to know how your relationships are affected by these different languages.
How do you determine your primary love language? You can read the entire book and figure out what category you are, or you can skip to the quiz at the back of the book or take it on the website.
There are five love languages as described: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. They will depend on many different factors, most likely akin to your personality and how you gave and received love as a child.
What Happens Now?
So you take the quiz provided at the back of the book, (not all versions include this) determine which love language you are, and voila! Perfectly magical relationships, right?
I think we both know that’s not how it works! Obviously, you have to determine the types of things a person enjoys inside of the determined love language.
For example, if you are a person whose primary love language is Receiving Gifts, you can’t assume you like all gifts. Chances are, you only really feel loved when someone gives you gifts that are frivolous, fun, spontaneous, and unnecessary. On the flip side, you may be someone who enjoys receiving gifts you can actually use. You are a practical person, my friend.
But we also need to keep in mind that life’s one constant is CHANGE. Do you really think that you are going to be the same person now as you were when you were 14? Absolutely not. Our life experiences and education change us, for better or worse. I know that I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago, thank goodness for that!
Hence, your love language changes, too!
The first time I took the love languages quiz was in 2010 when I was in college. I was part of an all girl’s group who read certain theological and love-based books and met to share them with others. My book was The 5 Love Languages (I remember presenting it in near Valentine’s Day). It was fascinating to read, and I felt like I learned so much about myself. I don’t really remember what my top language was. I believe it was Quality Time or Words of Affirmation with a score of 11 or so. Physical Touch was my least score with 1. I hated being touched, except for the occasional hug from a friend or family member.
I took the test again when my husband and I were dating. I remember Physical Touch being in the top two or three. The rest I cannot recall.
You might also enjoy these articles: Our Catholic Match Story, Embracing Your Engagement Story
Fast forward 6 years later. This time my husband and I took it together to know if we were loving each other the way we should be. His highest was Physical Touch with 9, followed closely by Words of Affirmation with 8.
Mine, however, changed. I scored 9 on Words of Affirmation, followed closely by an 8 on Acts of Service. This time, Physical Touch scored a 7. My lowest was Receiving Gifts.
Finally, I took the Love Languages quiz today. The results are as follows: Quality Time, 9; Words of Affirmation, 8; Acts of Service, 7; Physical Touch, 4; Receiving Gifts, 2.
How Does This Happen?
Looking at all of my results, one constant is my top three. More times than not, my top three were usually the same. Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, and Acts of Service, just arranged in different orders. Gary Chapman does advise that most people will have more than one strong love language.
What changed the most was the language of Physical Touch. It swung from 1 to 7 or 8 twice, and then back down to a 4. How does one explain this?
I have a few theories.
Theory One: As I grew older and had more life experiences and lessons, I knew myself better through those lessons and experiences. Often as youngsters or even young adults, our lack of experience of conventional wisdom shows in assessments like this. The process of becoming more an adult, you might say.
Theory Two: My Physical Touch score changed so much because of the life stage I was in at the time. My low scores were times in my life when I had no romantic relationships. The higher scores indicated when I was in the throes of young, passionate love as an engaged and newly married woman. And the dip in the Physical Touch score comes again 2.5 years into our marriage, perhaps indicating a more settled and mature love.
Both of these theories are accurate and true in their own right. Of course, life experiences and situations are going to change the way we look at, give, and even receive love. How we perceive love changes at different times in our lives.
How Has Your Love Language Changed?
Perhaps you’ve only taken the quiz once. Are you curious to see if it changed? You may not even remember what your original love language is.
I challenge you to take it again, or for the first time if you have never discovered your love language. Save your results and take it again a few years later. Note if the orders or numbers differed. Try to pinpoint events in your life that may have an effect on the way the languages score.
It is fascinating to look at the different ways our ‘love tanks’ stay full, and how they may change in our lifetime. Gary Chapman has definitely hit gold on this one.
Happy language learning!
P.S. There is also a Love Languages book for children and teenagers. How cool is that? The basic five languages still apply but from a child’s perspective. It helps you figure out your child(ren)’s language(s). I will be investing in those soon!
Note: I have not been paid by Gary Chapman or anyone associated with The 5 Love Languages to promote this book. It is simply a book I recommend and enjoy using with my personal relationships.
