Love Language Lie
Why it doesn’t matter if you speak the same love language
© bernardbodo / Adobe Stock
Which love language do you speak? In recent years, the so-called love language has been considered the key to a happy relationship – or the explanation for a failing one. A new study reminds us: love is not that simple after all.
“Love language: touch” or “words of affirmation” is written under the colorful pictures that I happily swipe back and forth. I’m currently spending a lot of time on dating apps, fortunately not for myself. Swifties would probably say I’m in my matchmaking era. Having successfully found someone myself, I now accept requests for profile creation. I do private online dating advice and I love it. One of my favorite features: some portals now allow other people to vote on potential partners using a personalized link. And that’s where I notice them, the five magic words that keep appearing in profiles.
These are the five languages of love. The theory is that every person speaks one of the five love languages fluently, so to speak, has a native language through which they send and receive love. These were defined by the psychologist Gary Chapman in a book of the same name in 1992 and can be summarized as follows:
- Words of recognition
- Time for two
- Gifts
- Mutual support
- Physical touch
In their dating profiles, those looking for love try to make it clear from the outset which language they speak. This is not least due to the fact that “love languages” have experienced a real boom in the last 20 years. The languages appear in social media, but also in books, films and relationship guides, and serve as an explanation for what we otherwise find difficult to put into words, how love arises and fades.
As much as I understand the search for the key to a functioning relationship, I have to disappoint you: the love language is not it. This has now been This was the result of a study conducted by Emely A. Impett and her team at the University of Toronto. In it, the researchers tested several hypotheses about the five love languages for their accuracy. One of them: those who speak the same love language have better relationships.
The result may surprise many, because this hypothesis could not be confirmed. The researchers found no significant connection between a matching love language and relationship satisfaction.
This, of course, turns the entire social media online dating world upside down for those who have been looking for true love based on Chapman’s love language theory – or an explanation for why previous love affairs have failed. The popularity of love languages, in turn, illustrates how much we humans long for the key to long, happy relationships. However, since we all have individual locks, the universal key is unlikely to exist. That’s no reason to despair: the researchers from Toronto have a solution for this: simply keep a whole bunch of keys ready.
Nutritional value principle replaces love languages
The scientists draw two conclusions from the study results: people long to understand relationships in order to improve them. Here, experts are again called upon to translate studies in relationship research in a way that is understandable and relevant to everyday life. And as a conclusion to these two aspects, Impett and her team present the “nutritional value principle”.
According to Impett, it is not just a shared love language that promises a happy relationship, but a variety of ingredients that ensure satisfaction. You can imagine this as being similar to a balanced diet: love does not need just one way of showing affection, but many different nutritional values in order to age healthily.
You can imagine the five love languages as different ingredients or nutrients that play a major role at different times in a relationship. If a woman is pregnant, she needs folic acid. If one part of the relationship is stressed, he or she needs a lot of touch. In another phase of life, the needs can be completely different.
Using this somewhat abstract metaphor, the researchers are trying to break down their results into the advice that can be found on every dietary supplement: a single substance is no substitute for a balanced diet. And so a shared love language is not the only guarantee for a happy relationship. Rather, it helps to know the vocabulary of all love languages - and to use it flexibly, depending on which nutrients love needs at the time.