Love Languages
and learning to listen for them
My mother irons my pillowcases, smoothing their wrinkles into sharp edges—crisp. There is a poem in that. An essay, too, and maybe even a song. I want to tell her there’s no need and please don’t go to extra trouble and all this work won’t make any difference once I’ve slept on them. But this is a poem and a song and I know what I love you looks like, so I don’t say these things to her. Instead, I smile. I say thank you. I say my bed will look so beautiful.
In the 1990s, a Baptist pastor named Gary Chapman found that couples could better understand each other’s ways of expressing love when given categories for their actions—like a matching game. He called these categories the five love languages: words of affirmation, acts of service, gift-giving, quality time, and physical touch. Here are some rough definitions so we’re all on the same page:
Words of Affirmation: expressing admiration through compliments, etc.
Acts of Service: doing something that helps a loved one, like running an errand
Gift-Giving: giving a loved one a thoughtful present
Quality Time: time spent giving a loved one your undivided attention
Physical Touch: demonstrating physical affection for a loved one (hug, kiss, etc)
Experts don’t find the categories very viable in a formal sense, but I’m not sure that matters. Of course there are more than five ways of expressing love and of course the love languages essentialize, generalize, and oversimplify, but that’s only a problem if we let it become one. Perhaps Gary Chapman meant people to take the languages seriously, but what happens if we don’t? They become an interesting tool: a fast-track to intimacy.
Asking someone about their love language creates an atmosphere, even between new acquaintances, that allows deeper connection more quickly. Not every time, but often enough to be significant. It’s like asking someone whether they believe in a higher power when you’re halfway through your first date: how can you answer properly without revealing fundamental truths about yourself? The love languages remind us, too, that someone else’s I love you might come in a form we need to translate to understand.
On the surface, ironing someone’s pillowcases might seem like a textbook act of service: it is an act—a labor—done out of love. But to really fit, the act of service must also be one that the loved one will appreciate, something that helps them. This is the language my father speaks when he gets the groceries or shows my mother how to mark up a PDF on her iPad. It is the language my mother speaks when she cuts my father’s hair or puts gas in his car even though the tank’s not quite empty yet. This language has a slightly different syntax than the one she speaks at the ironing board.
While I do appreciate the aesthetic of a freshly ironed pillowcase, it’s not something I would ever think to do for myself—a nice thing, not a necessary one, and certainly not one that I miss when it’s not there. My mother knows this. The language her iron speaks cannot, then, be acts of service. It is not a labor of love, one concerned with what is produced or with the receiver’s reaction. Instead, it is a language made of the act itself: labor as love.
In some ways, I wish this were a language that came more easily to me. It’s one I admire greatly—there’s a selflessness in it, a beautiful sincerity. I speak more fluently in acts of service than in this language of labor as love, though, and my native language is something much closer to gift-giving and words of affirmation, with a liberal smattering of quality time and physical touch.
Listening for unfamiliar I love yous requires time, intention, concentration, and it’s an instinct I’ve always leaned into. Finding I love you when a friend sends me a picture of a lamp, a fence, a pair of shoes in my favorite shade of yellow; I love you in a song to share even though we’re hundreds of miles apart; I love you in tickets to the movies on my birthday because I would never buy them for myself; I love you in tiny moments beyond count, many of which I’m sure I’ve missed—it’s a refusal to believe that everyone communicates in the same ways, using the same words, or even the same alphabet. Whether or not we learn to speak each other’s languages, learning to listen, to hear, lets us feel as truly cherished as we are, and that is beauty enough.