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Happy February, Friends! Today is the first day of the Love Blog challenge for 2019! If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may remember that I’ve helped host this challenge for the last 3 years! Here are all my Love Blog archives if you’re interested.
I am co-hosting the Love Blog Challenge today. The prompt is “The 5 Love Languages.” I’ve shared the prompt list for the rest of the month below but also feel free to head over to Brita’s Introduction Post for more details and ideas for each prompt. We’d love to have you join us!
So if you haven’t been living under a rock for a while, you’ve probably heard of The 5 Love Languages, right?
It’s a wonderful book by Gary Chapman. The concept is that there are 5 different “languages” that people speak to show and receive love. Those 5 languages are Quality Time, Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, and Receiving Gifts. You can take a quiz on the website to find out what your primary language is and where all the languages fall in your priorities. (Gary Chapman has since also written several other books including The 5 Love Languages Singles Edition, The 5 Love Languages of Children, and The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers).
The book and this concept in general helps a lot of different relationships because it shows people that they may be speaking a love language that their partner (or friend, sibling, child, parent etc) doesn’t speak or understand very well.
For example, my primary love language has always been Quality Time. Pearson’s however, used to be Physical Touch and changed to Words of Affirmation. So back in 2015 and 2016, when he was working 80-90 hours per week in grad school, not being able to spend a lot of time together took a bigger toll on me than him. Whereas, having an adviser who always criticized him and never praised him, hit Pearson harder than it probably would have hit me.
I’ve actually talked about The 5 Love Languages quite a bit on the blog. I’ve discussed the concept as a whole a few times as well as shared lots of ideas for speaking the individual languages. Check out my Love Languages category to read any of these posts.
So anyway, I encourage you to take the quiz and have your spouse do the same. Once you know each other’s languages, make an effort to speak them more often, but also to recognize when your partner is speaking their own language. You may be surprised at how much they have been showing their love and you just haven’t recognized it!
One thing I always emphasize whenever I talk about the Love Languages is that your primary language can change! In fact, people’s languages usually do change over the course of their life. I mean, it makes since, right? As you grow and mature and go through different stages in your life, different things are going to be important to you.
So Pearson and I take the quiz fairly often. In fact we usually take it every year around this time. Except apparently we missed last year. (We had just moved across the country though). So the last time I did this was in 2017 and both of our lists have changed quite a bit since then!
Below are our scores from every year we’ve taken the test. Mine are on the left and Pearson’s are on the right. Isn’t it interesting how much (or how little) they’ve changed over the years? I like seeing the years that they changed a lot and thinking back on things that happened that year and where we were in life.
Table of Contents
My scores / Pearson’s scores from 2014
My scores / Pearson’s scores from 2015
My scores / Pearson’s scores from 2016
My scores / Pearson’s scores from 2017
My scores / Pearson’s scores from 2019
So if you couldn’t tell, I’m a little obsessed with the 5 Love Languages. I basically think Gary Chapman is a genius and everyone should read the book and take the quiz often.
What is your primary love language? Are you and your spouse similar or completely different?
Thanks for reading! And be sure to link up any “love languages” posts below!
Meet Your Hosts:
Brita Long is the pink and sparkly personality behind the Christian feminist lifestyle blog, Belle Brita. On her blog and social media, you’ll discover more than authentic storytelling–she’s brutally honest about pursuing a fulfilling and joyful life even with Crohn’s Disease and depression.
Alessia is a lifestyle blogger, and writer with a post-graduate degree in History. She lives in the best borough in London, up and coming Croydon. She’s a bit like Emma Woodhouse (Pemberley Digital version) and no longer the most eligible Catholic bachelorette, as she has found her Mr Knightley in sunny Derbyshire.
Charlene is a 20 something wife and fur-mama living in Portland, Oregon. She’s a follower of Christ, watcher of SciFi, reader of fantasy, singer of show tunes, and lover of her husband! She uses her blog, Enduring All Things to help couples build a marriage that will endure whatever comes their way.
I’m going to take the test again after I’m done reading the posts they’ve sent in so far but I suspect mine has heavily shifted towards acts of service.
Isn’t it fun how we can tell what they are before we take the test?
Tim and I are the opposite of you. He wants me to go to Home Depot with him and I want him to tell me how great a writer I am. And we do. I wonder how we will change in the next few years? Thanks for encouraging us to investigate as time goes by… xoxox
It’s great that you speak each other’s languages!
I am single, and I took the test as a single person and as a taken person. Physical touch ranked high which means it’s my love language. I can see how yours has evolved over the years.
I really wish I had known about the book before I started dating my husband. I first heard about it the summer we got engaged. It would have been interesting to know how the languages ranked with me when I was single.
Yeah. I will get my partner to take the test and then we’ll see.
My primary has always been, and I think will always be, Words of Affirmation. My secondary has changed a few times, though. Dan’s primary has always been Physical Touch. I’m not sure if it will stay that way or not. I do find it interesting that he doesn’t prioritize Acts of Service at all, but he’s so very good at speaking it to others!
Good for Dan for speaking something that he doesn’t prioritize well! I thought for sure another language was going to pass Quality Time for me because Pearson and I have shared a lot of quality time in the past year (with all of our travels plus Pearson only working 50 hours per week) but sure enough it’s still my number one with the same score as almost every other time I’ve taken it.
I love seeing how our love languages change!
Isn’t it so interesting? I’m not sure why but I just love seeing them change and thinking about what we’ve gone through to possibly make us prioritize different languages.