Somebody in your life has done the quiz. Perhaps it was you, at eleven at night, with a glass of wine and a suspicious amount of optimism. Within ninety seconds you were informed that your love language is “Words of Affirmation”, that your partner’s is “Acts of Service”, and that every row you have ever had about the dishwasher is, in fact, a translation error.
It is a lovely idea. Slightly too lovely, which is usually the warning sign. So let us do what we always do here: take the thing seriously enough to check whether it holds up, and lightly enough to have a laugh on the way.
Where the five love languages came from
The idea comes from Gary Chapman, an American Baptist pastor and marriage counsellor, whose book The Five Love Languages appeared in 1992. It grew out of what he noticed in the couples who came to him for counselling, not out of a laboratory. That matters. A counsellor’s impressions are a perfectly respectable place to start a theory, but a rather wobbly place to finish one.
The five languages are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch. The promise is wonderfully neat: each of us has one favourite way of feeling loved, our partner has another, and most relationship misery comes from speaking different dialects at each other. Learn the dialect and peace breaks out.
What the research actually says
In 2024 the relationship scientists Emily Impett, Haeyoung Gideon Park and Amy Muise reviewed the evidence in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. The University of Toronto summed up their verdict as little evidence linking the five love languages to healthy relationships. The book rests on three big assumptions, and the research does not back any of them convincingly.
First, that each of us has one preferred love language. When people are not forced to choose between holding hands and being handed a present, they tend to value all five. Chapman’s quiz is built on forced choices, so it will produce a favourite whether or not you had one.
Second, that there are exactly five. Five is a very satisfying number for a book. Real affection is messier: humour, shared projects, being listened to, being forgiven, someone remembering that you hate coriander.
Third, and most importantly, that couples are happier when they speak each other’s preferred language. The research that exists does not show that matching makes couples noticeably happier. It is also worth knowing that the framework grew out of a fairly narrow group of mixed-gender, traditional couples, and was then offered to the rest of humanity.
So why does it feel so true?
Part of the answer is the same trick that keeps horoscopes in business. “You like to feel appreciated and you also enjoy it when people make an effort” is true of practically everyone, which is exactly why it feels like a personal revelation. Add a tidy label, a quiz and a pastel infographic, and you have a product.
There is a more generous explanation too. The quiz gives couples a reason to talk about love in concrete terms, and that conversation is worth far more than the label. Plenty of people have felt closer to a partner after saying, out loud, “it means a lot when you ask about my day”. The credit belongs to the saying, not to the taxonomy.
When the label turns sour
Labels have a nasty habit of going off. “Sorry, I simply don’t speak Quality Time” is a splendid excuse for skipping dinner. “Your language is Gifts, so you are materialistic” is an insult dressed up as insight. And if you decide that your partner’s failure to read your mind is a language barrier, you have found a rather elegant way of never asking for what you want.
What to do instead
Skip the quiz, or take it for fun, and then do the unfashionable thing: ask. What makes you feel loved this month? What would you like more of? What do I do that you could happily live without? Preferences shift with stress, age, children, work and the weather. A language you settled on at a dinner party in March may be out of date by June.
Be generous in all five directions. Say the kind thing, spend the time, bring home the odd silly present, do the washing up, touch each other without it having to lead anywhere. And if asking out loud feels like climbing a cliff, our guide on how to actually talk to each other is a gentler place to start.
How you ask, and how safe it feels to ask, owes a lot to your attachment style. The same goes for the bedroom, where “physical touch” is a rather coy summary: have a look at how to talk about sex. And if you would like to know what a good relationship tends to look like when nobody has bought a quiz, begin with the signs that actually matter.
The point of it all
Love languages make a decent conversation starter and a poor scientific theory. Treat them like a menu, not a diagnosis: order a bit of everything, and ask your partner what they fancy tonight.
Did the quiz get you right, or did it decide you speak “Gifts” because you once enjoyed a bunch of flowers? Tell us in the comments, and do be honest. Your partner may be reading.