The five love languages

THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES
By Gary Chapman
Northfield Publishing
ISBN 1 8812 7310 5

There is a proliferation of these books, which stem from the original ‘Love Languages’ book published over a decade ago. You can learn to speak the right love language to your child or teenager; you can have the edition for men, the edition for singles, etc.

Gary Chapman developed the original thesis in working with people whose marriages were floundering. Modesty is not his strong suit. He states on a number of occasions that thousands of couples have massively benefited from his ideas. The key to marriage is, ‘learn to speak your spouse’s language’.

I always take testimonials of that nature with a pinch of salt, but most people I know who have tried to mend cracks in sagging relationships are happy to receive a few tips. That makes a book like this worth skim reading the self-congratulation in order to get to what the guy is saying.

It comes down to this: we all have a love tank and we function best when our love tank is full. However, we don’t all require the same kind of petrol to fill our love tanks. There are five types apparently. All we need to do is discover which one does the business for the one we love and hey presto.

The five languages are: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, physical touch. The reason marriages go down the pan says Chapman is that a husband is expressing his love, say, via acts of service, when the wife’s love tank is only filled by, say, quality time. If he would just start speaking her love language...
Chapman argues (pop) psychologically and pragmatically. There are dozens of winning-through Wayne and Sherrill stories in the book. Marriage counselling was never such a piece of cake in my experience. However, for some couples it might provide a place to start. There is the ‘five love languuages personal assessment tool’ in the back of the book. The book does not argue theologically or Scripturally, although there is some oblique use of Scripture. Gary Chapman does testify to his own faith in a chapter at the end. This is a book which might be helpful to unchurched unbelievers.

It has some unacknowledged and screaming limitations, of course. It assumes that both partners in a troubled marriage are equally motivated to mend it.

Ann Benton