Thirty years after Gary Chapman's theory of romantic communication was first published, love languages maintain a strong foothold in modern romance. KTHeaney reports
Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty She can’t speak for herself, but I think it’s obvious: Elizabeth Bennet’s love language is words of affirmation. The protagonist of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Lizzy is a sharp social observer, famously clever, and, occasionally, a crafter of devastating critique.
It’s tempting to classify love languages as yet another TikTok psychologism, but so far, it seems, the framework remains endearingly unproblematic. The basic gist is this: People express love in different ways, which can be generally broken down into five categories: words of affirmation , acts of service , quality time , physical touch, and gifts. Each of us has a preference and is likely to prefer to both show and receive love in this “language” above all others.
Orna Guralnik, a couples therapist and star of Showtime’s Couples Therapy, feels similarly. “I really appreciate the idea that the love languages communicate the notion that people’s differences don’t make them more or less loving,” she tells me. “People really can love differently.” Often, when couples find themselves in conflict, each partner views their own way of expressing love as the right way, and therefore sees the other partner as deficient or even absent.
“A few years back I was in a relationship where my partner’s love language was words of affirmation,” says Chelsea, a 30-year-old acquaintance of mine from Brooklyn. “Mine is acts of service. We always clashed. There are times I’m willing to learn another person’s language, but other times it just won’t work. No one’s at fault.
Though book sales have been largely consistent over the past year, Lundquist also speculates that love languages feel particularly relevant among both single and partnered patients lately — albeit for different reasons — largely due to time management and existentialist questions prompted by the pandemic. “We’re in this moment where people are diving back into dating, and maybe thinking differently about dating,” he says.
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