The Five Love Languages: Definition, Types, & Examples

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
The five love languages are different ways of expressing one’s love to another person. Let’s see what science has to say about how knowing the five love languages can help you.
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I have never thought of myself as a good gift giver. It is just hard to know what physical objects another person will find meaningful. Perhaps I’m too practical a person, and I just assume that people have most of the things they need already. I was stuck in a gift-giving rut for many years, until a partner clued me in to the idea of gifting experiences to people. Suddenly, I had a form of gift-giving that made sense to me. I knew I valued special experiences, and I had an easier time imagining what kinds of experiences the people in my life would enjoy. That same partner showed me how much of a gift a truly heartfelt card can be, and I have since become a dedicated writer of notes, letters, and cards to others.
Looking back on these changes in my life, I can see how they reflects my preference for different love languages. I find it very meaningful to both give and receive verbal and written expressions of love, just as I love spending time exercising, cooking, and making music with friends. At the same time, gifts just don’t mean that much to me. As I’ve come to know my own love languages, I have come to recognize them in others. Let’s dive into this helpful way of understanding different expressions of love.
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What Are The Five Love Languages? (A Definition)

The five love languages are a typology, or a way of organizing things – in this case, different love-related behaviors. More specifically, the five love languages are the five different expressions of love that a faith leader named Gary Chapman described in a best-selling book (Chapman, 2009). Although Chapman’s ideas were first applied primarily to romantic couples, they have also been applied to all kinds of other relationships between people.
 
Chapman (2009) proposed that each of us has a metaphorical “love tank”, which reflects how much we feel loved by other people. We can think of our love tank as being full when we feel close to and loved by others, and we can think of it as low or empty when our emotional needs are not being met by our relationship(s). Chapman wrote that certain behaviors fill our love tanks better than others. Each of us has preferences for how love is communicated to us – that is, each of us has a love language (or two) that we prefer over the others.

Why Are The Five Love Languages Important?

First of all, the five love languages are important because this typology is a popular idea with many people, including many therapists (Chapman, 2009). The idea of different love languages fits nicely with our natural desire to understand why some people seem more like our “types” than others, and why experiences of love can vary so widely from one person to another.
 
Second, it does appear that expressions of love are related to the quality of our romantic relationships (Hahn & Blass, 1997; Ireland et al., 2011). Specifically, there is a lot of research that suggests that people prefer and even seek out relationships with people who have similar ways of expressing love, and communicating more generally. This may be because people with similar styles of showing love have similar underlying personality traits (May & Jones, 2005) or because they tend to have similar attitudes regarding how to build and maintain relationships (Egbert & Polk, 2006).

Love Languages Research​

Since the five love languages were developed by someone who is not an academic, or even a trained counselor, and who did not use scientific methods to formulate their typology, a handful of researchers have tried to determine whether the idea of the five love languages is valid. In doing so, they have wanted to know whether people’s behaviors actually work this way – does it make sense to organize our thinking about expressions of love in this way? They have also wanted to know whether knowing somebody’s preferred love language(s) is actually helpful information – can we use it to predict other things about them, such as the quality of their relationships?
 
When one pair of researchers tried to create a measure of different behaviors that they believed fit into each category of love language, they found that the organization was not a particularly strong one, although they could not identify a better way to organize the behaviors, either (Polk & Egbert, 2013). One of their concerns was that the love languages were correlated with each other – in other words, if you used one love language a lot, you might be more likely to use another one a lot, too. Looking at these results, they voiced concern that maybe there is more overlap, and less separation, between some of the love languages than Chapman believed. Other researchers have voiced similar concerns (Cook et al., 2013).

Regarding whether love languages are a useful predictor, some researchers have found that people’s love languages, and whether they match on these preferences, are not related to the quality of their relationships, while others have found that yes, they do matter (Hughes & Camden, 2020; Bland & McQueen, 2018; Bunt & Hazelwood, 2017).
 
What should we make of these findings? I believe that the idea itself does not have to be scientifically proven to be useful. The love languages can be related to each other, and we can still have a preference for one over the other. Even if they are not the most scientifically valid way of categorizing our expressions of love, they are an idea that helps people understand why and how their relationships work (or don’t work).

Benefits of the Five Love Languages

As I noted above, couples in which the partners use similar love languages may have higher quality relationships (Bland & McQueen, 2018; Mostova et al., 2022). More to the point, when people can identify that their partner is expressing love in the language that they prefer, they report feeling more love in the relationship (Hughes & Camden, 2020). This benefit was even stronger for women than for men in the study, by the way.
 
Also, having general awareness about the love languages may help one’s relationship. In one research study, a relationship education program based on the five love languages was provided to couples, and their participants became more empathetic to their partners as they learned about the love languages (Nichols et al., 2018).​​

The Five Types of Love Languages

Okay, after all that background, I bet you’d like to know what Chapman (2009)’s five love languages are. They are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Let’s look at each one in depth.
 
  • Words of affirmation (verbal compliments and statements of appreciation)
  • Quality time (focused attention and quality conversation)
  • Receiving gifts (tangible gifts and physical symbols of love) 
  • Acts of service (doing favours for one another)
  • Physical touch (from putting a hand on one’s shoulder to intercourse)​​

Love Languages: Acts of Service​

Acts of service are helpful behaviors or favors that make the other person’s life easier or happier. These can include everything from doing your partner’s laundry to picking up a prescription for a friend to donating an organ to a family member who needs it. Acts of service are an intentional use of one’s own energy and time to demonstrate love for another person in a functional way.​​

Love Languages: Words of Affirmation​

Words of affirmation typically include some aspect of appreciation or being complimentary. This could include a parent praising a child for their hard effort, one partner thanking the other for making the dinner reservation, or someone praising their friend for the beautiful attention to detail in their artwork.​​

Love Languages: Quality Time​

When we deliberately choose to spend time with a partner in some meaningful activity, we are expressing love through quality time. Note that sitting on the couch watching a sitcom after dinner might not count as quality time, unless you’re truly connecting through conversation while you do it. Quality time means that some thought was given to what would be an enjoyable experience for the other person.    ​​​

Love Languages: Physical Touch​

Many of us express love regularly through touch. I think of animals when this category comes to mind, actually. The cat in my house can only really express affection for me by rubbing her body against my legs (maybe the way she playfully tries to bite my hands count, too) or by choosing to nap on my chest when I’m reading on my bed. As humans, we can use words of affection to communicate much of our love, but sometimes a wordless moment of physical contact can say just as much or more.

Sexual touch definitely falls into this category, but it is far from the only way to express this love language. I have found in my therapy work with couples that little moments of physical connection often matter much more than intense, sexual touches (Gulledge et al., 2003).​​

Love Languages: Gifts​

The final love language is the giving of gifts. Whether homemade or store-bought, a gift signals love by showing that you considered what the other person might want or need and that you were willing to make sacrifices or time or resources so that they could have it.​​

Love Languages: Giving vs Receiving

We have preferred ways of both giving and receiving love, and they may not always look the same. In other words, your preferred love language when it comes to giving love may not be what you prefer when it comes to receiving love, although often they are the same (Chapman, 2009). For example, I love performing acts of service for other people, but I find it uncomfortable when people do the same for me! On the other hand, I relish showing love through physical touch and receiving love in that way, too.

Examples of the Five Love Languages

These love languages can be in action throughout our days – it’s likely that most of us use several or all the types. For example, when a couple meets up for a dinner date, they may hug and kiss in greeting and hold hands during the dinner (physical touch). Perhaps one person made the reservation (an act of service), while the other offered to treat them (a gift). While eating, they may review their days and offer supportive thoughts (words of affirmation). And throughout, they are engaged in meaningful activity together (quality time).

When Your Love Language Is Not Met

Couples are frequently mismatched in their love languages (Polk & Egbert, 2013), and this can make it hard to feel met in their love languages. Often, people pair up because their personalities complement each other in helpful ways, but that complementarity can also lead to different love language preferences. With couple therapy clients, I have often counseled clients to listen closely for their partners’ love languages and to think seriously about how to speak that language. For many men, in particular, learning to use words of affirmation can be a challenge, but their partners are often very gratified by their efforts to adapt (Chapman, 2009).

Can You Have Multiple Love Languages?

Almost all of us have a love language that means the most to us, but we typically give and receive love in multiple love languages. So a person might say, “My love language is words of affirmation”, but it would be more accurate to add that they also appreciate quality time and acts of service, too.

Love Languages for Relationships

Love languages are present in all relationships, including those with children (Chapman & Campbell, 1997). Receiving love through quality time, words of affirmation, and acts of service seems to be particularly beneficial for children’s development (Maximo & Carranza, 2016).
 
Since most relationships are characterized by caring and affection in the first place, it is more often the case that love language challenges arise from a lack of awareness about love languages, not an ability to speak each love language (Chapman, 2009). Couples may need significant help reorienting themselves; to speak that less familiar language fluently will take both awareness of love language preferences and an ability to self-regulate oneself in the moment (Bunt & Hazelwood, 2017).

Articles Related to Love Languages

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Love Languages

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on the Five Love Languages

Chapman’s five love languages are a popular and helpful way of understanding the different ways we express love. They are far from the only way to think about this, and it is likely that more research will help us understand the love languages even better. For example, a recent study suggested that we could potentially add a sixth love language – “check-ins” – to the list (Pett et al., 2023). I hope thinking about love languages has helped you better understand the close relationships in your life.

If you’d like some more information about the love languages, check out this interview with Gary Chapman himself:​​​

Video: Dr. Gary Chapman on The Five Love Languages

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