The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts
Over 20 million copies sold!
A perennial New York Times bestseller for over a decade!
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love--that's the challenge. How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts, and just plain boredom of everyday life?
In the #1 New York Times international bestseller The 5 Love Languages(R), you'll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman's proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner--starting today.
The 5 Love Languages(R) is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work.
Includes the Love Language assessment so you can discover your love language and that of your loved one.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
I really liked this book. It is a simply, forward way of looking at love and relationships. These concepts seem obvious, but apparently they're not. It made wonderful sense to me and I think it'll really help keep my relationship fresh and loving even after the in-love feeling Dr. Chapman talks about wears off. I can't wait for the years of deeper love ahead. Check out my blog review of the book!
http://karen-christina.blogspot.com/2012/02/5-love-languages.html
http://karen-christina.blogspot.com/2012/02/5-love-languages.html
This is repeated read of mine. Any time I meet a new colleague that I will work closely with or a new friendship I find myself reading this again. It is so important to figure out peoples love languages and just as important to portray your love languages to those people as well.
So confession to make - never actually read this book. Felt like everyone around me read it and I sorta read the notes at some point and figured I got the point. My wife and I talked about it probably six or seven years ago and thought we had figured out each other's type (both quality time) and sorta moved on from there.
Actually read (listened to) the book yesterday (couldn't put it down) and wow. You ever read a book and it just feels like it's resonating with you so much that you can feel all the neurons in your brain firing? I think I had that experience for most of the time that I was reading this book.
First of all - listen to this book. The author reads it himself and - wow - he seems like a kind, empathetic, caring human being. If you can't hear *how* he is saying some of these things, you are only getting half of this book.
Second of all, I badly underestimated the scope of this book. I thought this was a self-help book to improve your marriage. It's actually an EXHORTATION to apply the premises of Christian love to your marriage and parenting. Now I'm not a religious guy (NARG), but insofar as the basic idea of Christian love is - love everyone, no matter how shitty they are. And if they respond by being shitty, love them even more. And don't think about what that gets you, just do it and your reward will be *spiritual*. Even as a NARG, I think I fundamentally believe that. AND I think I fundamentally believe it more after reading this book.
Third, I didn't even actually know what my wife's love language was. For years we thought it was quality time. It's not. It's probably acts of service, though she also responds more positively to words of affirmation than she realized. So what happened? Look, early in a relationship everyone has their insecurities. And I think quality time was a way to alleviate insecurity. But alleviating insecurity isn't love. And I will tell you, for a long time that was sort of invisible - under the radar. But then kids happened and there was less time for everything. And suddenly Joy wasn't making as much quality time for me and I was trying to compensate for that by showering her with quality time. And we actually solved that problem a while back, even without the vocabulary for it. But it was truly stunning to revisit our relationship in light of this revelation - namely that I had both been expecting Joy to show her love for me in a language that was not natural to her AND that I was sharing my love with her in a way that was less resonant than I thought. What a practical insight!
Fourth, my oldest child has a love language! She's three and a half and what she really wants is quality time (and possibly words of affirmation, but I think mainly quality time). I have been experimenting with overloading her with quality time for two days and SHE LIGHTS UP LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE. It's not that I did not give her quality time before, it's that I didn't quite understand that a lot of the times she was frustrated it's not because she wasn't getting what she wanted, but rather because she felt like she wasn't getting quality time! She is actually perfectly happy to not have the snack or to stop playing with the toy and clean up IF she feels like she has my attention and caring and we are communicating. It's the combination of being told what to do and feeling at a distance from her parent that really sets her off. So in a sense, the book has taught me that all things are possible thru love - crucially - if you know how to communicate that love. And I suppose in both a practical and spiritual way, that very well may have been Christ's point... I don't think you need to introduce the concept of heaven for that basic fact about humanity to resonate.
Finally, I guess one question you could ask at the end of this book: why not do this with everyone? Aren't the best friendships actually based on love (philos not eros) and if you think that, shouldn't you try to communicate that love in a way that will resonate most with your friend? Isn't that just being a good friend?
I gotta tell you, I feel like I found this book a moment when I was sorta ready to have it shake me up - and shake it did. I think some more critical folks might read this book and come away thinking it's a bit reductive. I guess my response would be - so what? Look, there's a lot of different valid ways to come at life. There is ENOUGH truth in this one that it's worth trying on. If it reveals something new about the most important relationships in your life - well then it was worth 100 times the five hours you spent on it. If it doesn't, well then do whatever does work for you?
A simple approach to sharing love and helping others feel that love.
FIVE STARS!
Actually read (listened to) the book yesterday (couldn't put it down) and wow. You ever read a book and it just feels like it's resonating with you so much that you can feel all the neurons in your brain firing? I think I had that experience for most of the time that I was reading this book.
First of all - listen to this book. The author reads it himself and - wow - he seems like a kind, empathetic, caring human being. If you can't hear *how* he is saying some of these things, you are only getting half of this book.
Second of all, I badly underestimated the scope of this book. I thought this was a self-help book to improve your marriage. It's actually an EXHORTATION to apply the premises of Christian love to your marriage and parenting. Now I'm not a religious guy (NARG), but insofar as the basic idea of Christian love is - love everyone, no matter how shitty they are. And if they respond by being shitty, love them even more. And don't think about what that gets you, just do it and your reward will be *spiritual*. Even as a NARG, I think I fundamentally believe that. AND I think I fundamentally believe it more after reading this book.
Third, I didn't even actually know what my wife's love language was. For years we thought it was quality time. It's not. It's probably acts of service, though she also responds more positively to words of affirmation than she realized. So what happened? Look, early in a relationship everyone has their insecurities. And I think quality time was a way to alleviate insecurity. But alleviating insecurity isn't love. And I will tell you, for a long time that was sort of invisible - under the radar. But then kids happened and there was less time for everything. And suddenly Joy wasn't making as much quality time for me and I was trying to compensate for that by showering her with quality time. And we actually solved that problem a while back, even without the vocabulary for it. But it was truly stunning to revisit our relationship in light of this revelation - namely that I had both been expecting Joy to show her love for me in a language that was not natural to her AND that I was sharing my love with her in a way that was less resonant than I thought. What a practical insight!
Fourth, my oldest child has a love language! She's three and a half and what she really wants is quality time (and possibly words of affirmation, but I think mainly quality time). I have been experimenting with overloading her with quality time for two days and SHE LIGHTS UP LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE. It's not that I did not give her quality time before, it's that I didn't quite understand that a lot of the times she was frustrated it's not because she wasn't getting what she wanted, but rather because she felt like she wasn't getting quality time! She is actually perfectly happy to not have the snack or to stop playing with the toy and clean up IF she feels like she has my attention and caring and we are communicating. It's the combination of being told what to do and feeling at a distance from her parent that really sets her off. So in a sense, the book has taught me that all things are possible thru love - crucially - if you know how to communicate that love. And I suppose in both a practical and spiritual way, that very well may have been Christ's point... I don't think you need to introduce the concept of heaven for that basic fact about humanity to resonate.
Finally, I guess one question you could ask at the end of this book: why not do this with everyone? Aren't the best friendships actually based on love (philos not eros) and if you think that, shouldn't you try to communicate that love in a way that will resonate most with your friend? Isn't that just being a good friend?
I gotta tell you, I feel like I found this book a moment when I was sorta ready to have it shake me up - and shake it did. I think some more critical folks might read this book and come away thinking it's a bit reductive. I guess my response would be - so what? Look, there's a lot of different valid ways to come at life. There is ENOUGH truth in this one that it's worth trying on. If it reveals something new about the most important relationships in your life - well then it was worth 100 times the five hours you spent on it. If it doesn't, well then do whatever does work for you?
A simple approach to sharing love and helping others feel that love.
FIVE STARS!
In summary, this book delves into the concept of love languages and underscores that love is a conscious choice. It offers guidance on identifying your love language by reflecting on what your partner may overlook or what you often request from them, as well as how you prefer to express your affection.
Two stars, because I cannot say I didn't learn anything from this book nor that it didn't expand my horizons in SOME way. I thought the concept of the five languages of love made sense, but it's far from revolutionary. Somebody pointed out in a review that mr. Chapman thinks of himself as a saviour and that is definitely very clear in the book. It doesn't seem to me like he understands relationships and the complexity of human beings very well though. The case studies are hardly believable - I very much doubt his approach would fix some of these people's marriages, especially the one with the woman who is describing abuse, and his solution is... to have sex? To ignore everything she's experienced and just go have sex with her husband as an act of love? Because her husband will then love her back? Erm... What? I thought the last chapter made the most sense. In fact, I think the five love languages are more appropriate for children-parent relationships than adult marriages. I would probably read more about that. This, however, is full of misogynistic solutions and incredibly ancient gender roles, and it's painful to read at times.
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