The month of February calls for rain, a transition into spring and of course, love.
For Valentine’s Day, it can be hard to know the best way to show love for that special someone. Flowers? Date night? Love languages are a helpful tool in navigating the preferences within a relationship.
Love languages are a concept coined by best-selling author Gary Chapman, who wrote the 1992 book “The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts.” In his book, Chapman describes the five ways in which people give and receive love: acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation and physical touch.
“It’s basically the way each of us feel the most seen and valued by the way others love us,” Gabby Cabai, sophomore English and Psychology major and Relationship IQ intern, said.
The Love Languages website encourages people to take a quiz to discover their love language and exchange their results with loved ones with the end goal of creating stronger relationships in which parties can speak each other’s love language.
Sophomore Ernest Sunkel said he discovered the concept of love languages several years ago when his parents read Chapman’s book.
“We spent a lot of time talking about it and it’s fun to talk about what you think your love language is,” Sunkel said. “I know that there’s a love language you speak and a love language that you like to receive, so it’s interesting to talk about the way I feel most loved and the way that I feel most fulfilled giving love.”
Though some argue that everyone has only one love language, Sunkel and Cabai are both firm believers that one has both a “receiving” and “giving” love language.
Cabai said people’s love languages can go beyond just preference, and are sometimes rooted in past experience.
“Sometimes these habits are developed by things from the past, like friendships or family relationships,” Cabai said. “One of the ways that my mom would show up for me or my sister after a bad day is giving us a treat or one of our favorite coffees or making our favorite food for dinner.”
Cabai said she sees her mother’s examples directly affect her own display of love for others today, as she often makes or brings her loved ones things after a bad day. However, this also opened her eyes to the idea of having two different love languages within one person.
“I have friends who love giving gifts but hate receiving gifts, which is so interesting,” Cabai said.
Cabai said she believes her love language is acts of service, even if they are small, as they make her feel seen. She said her boyfriend does this really well, making her feel loved both when she needs it most and out of the blue.
Sunkel said he is still unsure about the way he feels the most loved, but words of affirmation play a big part of his life within his immediate circle of friends.
“I like to think that I have a pretty small circle — I have a lot of acquaintances, but only a few people that I call my best friends,” Sunkel said. “From those people, hearing words of affirmation is really nice because it shows that, first of all, they care, and second, that they have a reason, that they like me and they like to spend time with me.”
However, Sunkel said he often shows his love for others through a different medium: quality time.
“I express my love to others by spending quality time, because it’s very similar to acts of service in the way that I’m going out of my way,” Sunkel said.
British photographer and director Alasdair McLellan argued in a 2023 British Vogue article that it’s time to retire love languages unless people start enacting them within relationships.
McLellan acknowledged that everyone has the ability to take a quiz online or coin themselves as “self aware” by recognizing their love language. However, it is the actions taken afterward that often get left behind.
“But while it’s a net positive to venture out into the tall reeds of trying to understand why we are the way we are, there can be a tendency to pat ourselves on the back for simply connecting the dots,” McLellan wrote. “Ultimately, it’s what we do with this knowledge that is the important thing.”
Though love languages don’t necessarily need to measure compatibility between two parties, Cabai said they can be helpful in taking that next step to understand the needs of your partner.
Cabai said she recommends opening up the conversation by asking your partner, ‘What do you think your love language is?’ From there, a conversation can be opened about the ways each party prefers to be loved, allowing the other to understand the needs of their partner.
“I think that communicating your love languages to the people around you will help so much,” Cabai said. “Your friend or your partner or even one of your parents [will] just feel like they know how to support you better and at the end of the day, I just truly believe that’s what relationships are for.”
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Contact Amanda Monahan via email: amanda.monahan@pepperdine.edu
