Why Love Languages Are a Load of B.S.
Part 3: How to speak love languages fluently
You keep hearing about this whole love languages thing. Maybe you didn’t bother reading Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages, but if you read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, you get the gist of how they may help you with dating and relationships.
By now, if you’re like me, you may be thinking, “This crap doesn’t work.”
That’s right. I’ve gone through all this trouble to teach you how to speak love languages, yet I’m the first to call “B.S.” on it.
Here, I’ll give you three reasons why this whole love language thing may not work, along with three remedies.
1. We’re hogging all the love languages.
On a date, a guy told me his three love languages.
“You have three love languages?” I checked to make sure I heard right. “But there are only five. Does that mean you’re high maintenance?” I teased him.
I was already thinking, “Whoa! This guy is going to be a lot of work. I’d have to speak three languages fluently. Should I even go out on a second date with him?”
It took me a minute to realize he wasn’t high-maintenance. He just didn’t actually understand the whole love language thing because he never read the book.
When you look at the love languages, they all sound like what you need a person to do to make you feel loved. When you take the test (see Part 1), you may find you tie or score high for two or three languages.
Understandably, you wish your person would speak all the languages, but no one person can meet your thousand needs.
Help your person out. Pick the one language that you score highest on or, if tied, prefer most, and help your person learn what specific actions you value most in that language.
For example, if you say, “Honey, my language is acts of service,” tell her which kind of acts you’re most interested in. Housecleaning? Meal-making? Snow shoveling? Stout fetching? Something else?
Basically, you’re letting her know your language ‘dialect’.
