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®, 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® 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.
Though there are lists of books and articles that teach about love and marriage, and though they might be helpful in some areas, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the best-selling book The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts, they all sidestep one fundamental truth: people speak different "love languages."
He begins his book by explaining how people approach marriage with distinct personalities and histories and sometimes bring emotional baggage into that marriage relationship. As a result, they might have different expectations, ways of approaching things, and opinions about priorities in life. In a healthy marriage, the man and woman process those varying perspectives. But even a healthy marriage can experience rough patches—and it's almost guaranteed when the marriage is unhealthy. That's why Chapman says each person needs to learn how the other person loves.
Chapman uses the image of a tank to describe how people receive love—or feel unloved—a "love" tank. When a person's love tank is empty, the typical response is withdrawing or arguing. In severe cases, verbal or physical abuse might erupt. However, a full "love tank" creates a climate of friendliness that seeks to understand the other person and be willing to allow differences and negotiate problems. Thus, knowing what fills the other person's love tank is paramount.
Chapman's linguistics background—how people learn languages—undergirds and lends expert credibility to the book. He explains the idea of love languages using verbal language as an example. All people have a primary language or "native tongue," and some people have a secondary language. For example, a person's primary language might be English, and their secondary language, Chinese or Spanish. But no matter how fluent they might be in their secondary language, their primary language is the one they feel most comfortable speaking.
Similarly, if a person speaks a different love "language" than their mate, they may not be able to express love in a way that fills the other person's love tank. Readers will explore five ways or "languages" people love. But just as a language may have numerous dialects or variations, with the five basic emotional love languages, there are many "dialects," and thus many ways to express love within a love language.
Readers will learn that what's most important after learning a spouse's love language is learning to speak that love language well. And as they grow in understanding of how to do this, they will discover the key to a long-lasting, loving marriage.
- Acknowledgments
- 1. What Happens to Love after the Wedding?
- 2. Keeping the Love Tank Full
- 3. Falling in Love
- 4. Love Language #1: Words of Affirmation
- 5. Love Language #2: Quality Time
- 6. Love Language #3: Receiving Gifts
- 7. Love Language #4: Acts of Service
- 8. Love Language #5: Physical Touch
- 9. Discovering Your Primary Love Language
- 10. Love Is a Choice
- 11. Love Makes the Difference
- 12. Loving the Unlovely
- 13. A Personal Word
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The 5 Love Languages Profile for Couples—for Him
- The 5 Love Languages Profile for Couples—for Her
- Notes
Top Highlights
“Unfortunately, the eternality of the ‘in-love’ experience is fiction, not fact. The late psychologist Dr. Dorothy Tennov conducted long-range studies on the in-love phenomenon. After studying scores of couples, she concluded that the average life span of a romantic obsession is two years.” (source)
“In fact, true love cannot begin until the ‘in-love’ experience has run its course” (source)
“Seldom do a husband and wife have the same primary emotional love language” (source)
“know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct” (source)
“Encouragement requires empathy and seeing the world from your spouse’s perspective. We must first learn what is important to our spouse. Only then can we give encouragement. With verbal encouragement, we are trying to communicate, ‘I know. I care. I am with you. How can I help?’ We are trying to show that we believe in him and in his abilities. We are giving credit and praise.” (source)
The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts starts with a simple premise: God created people to love and be loved, but he also created them to receive love in different ways. Unique personalities, expectations, and histories play a part in each person's preferences for love. The 5 Love Languages helps husbands and wives recognize those preferences so they can better identify the root of potential conflicts.
Readers will learn all about these five "preferences," or "love languages":
- Words of affirmation: Affirming and encouraging words make this person feel most loved.
- Quality time: These people feel most loved when someone gives them undivided attention.
- Receiving gifts: Receiving a heartfelt gift is what makes these people feel most loved.
- Acts of service: Actions speak louder than words for these people.
- Physical touch: Love is expressed for this person through appropriate physical touch.
Husbands and wives will learn the three steps to strengthen a marriage relationship, beginning with learning their spouse's primary love language. This simple assessment, included in The 5 Love Languages, will help them better understand each other and teach the other person how they receive love best. Once they discover their own love language, the next step is to share it with each other so they can love one another better. Finally, consistently speaking each other's love language will help them grow closer.
Outside source: https://5lovelanguages.com/learn
Product Details
- Title : The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts
- Author: Chapman, Gary
- Publisher: Northfield Publishing
- Publication Date: 2014
- ISBN: 9780802492401
Dr. Gary Chapman is the author of the best-selling The Five Love Languages (more than 6 million copies sold) and numerous other marriage and family books. He is the director of Marriage and Family Life Consultants, INC., an internationally-known speaker, and the host of A Long Language Minute, a syndicated radio program heard on more than 200 stations across North America. He and his wife, Karolyn, live in North Carolina.