@@PauLtus_B The word "romance" here doesn't mean "romantic," it means "coming from Rome," the reason they all come from part of Europe is precisely the reason they're called that, because they developed from Latin, the language spoken in Ancient Rome. Rome --> Romance
a few weeks ago i was venting to a friend abt my partner not contributing to the housework, & I went “like, is my love language really acts of service, or do I just need my partner to do the dishes.” this video is everything i’ve been trying to put in words for a while now, so thanks ❤
People are different. People have different needs and expectations. Some people need to feel valued in a relationship. They need to feel like they actually matter and are not just being used. Maybe you or others don't have the same need. The example used in the video, for example. I wonder why it is the wife was sitting there ordering the husband around to do various chores. Tasking him like some kind of child. How come she wasn't helping or pitching in? It's pretty easy to be resentful of someone or feel unmotivated to help when they simply dictate to you like some kind of peon. And sometimes the barest encouragement is all someone needs. A reminder that they actually matter as a human being. Why would you bend over backwards doing everything for your partner when she doesn't lift a finger to help and orders you around without even basic respect?
> “like, is my love language really acts of service, or do I just need my partner to do the dishes.” When your partner does the dishes, what do you feel? Relief at a task being crossed off the list and appreciation of what the task has accomplished? Or butterflies in your stomach based on a _proof_ that your partner loves you, as in "aw that's so _sweet_ of you"? My partner makes coffee most mornings, and I think it's the sweetest thing. But if they stopped or had never done that, I wouldn't think or feel they loved me any less. [Maybe unless they stop doing it out of spite, but maybe the spite is a temporary mood thing.] This persuades me that this particular act of service is not part of my primary love language. Maybe a relevant difference between dishes and morning coffee is the difference between _our_ needs and _my_ needs: acts of service only triggers the love language warm fuzzies if it's purely about the needs and preferences of the recipients, i.e. if the act is a gift rather than a trade or collaboration. I hope someone finds this useful.
@@LC-wv7tz While I do see your point and agree that the example could have been elaborated slightly to avoid confusion, it is implied that the wife is the one doing basically all the chores apart from taking out the garbage (which for some reason commonly is labeled a male chore, similar to mowing the lawn).
@@persikosaft I don't think that's implied at all... it doesn't really imply anything one way or another. Who labels anything a "male" chore? Or a "female" chore? That's not a thing. never heard of in my life.
My wife and I had to read this book as a part of marriage prep to get married at our Catholic church (we're like, medium-low religious, married five years). We both thought the book had some okay points. But we also don't have an issue with communication. I think the book's main target are people who have trouble communicating with their partner. It narrows the field down A LOT, and gives each person a couple of things to focus on to encourage communication. I think that's... fine. The real issue I have with the book is the antiquated (patriarchal) way it's written. I'd have to dig up our copy we both annotated for specific examples. But I remember most, if not all of the author's examples placing the woman in the position of the fixer or the problem. I remember practically yelling at the book by the end. It's very frustrating, because it encourages so much of the infantilization of men in a relationship that contributed to these issues in the first place. Another example of this I found was in a potty training book we read. It's written by a woman, clearly towards women. A huge portion of it is dedicated to getting your partner (husband) to help you potty train your kid. It was depressing to read. But this is part of the problem, right? People aren't communicating, so they need the most basic help to not go crazy.
This: As someone asked to refer people for marriage counseling a lot, my first question is if they can do the homework I prescribe them for the next 4 weeks: talk face to face 30 minutes every day (no distractions) and each person gets 15 minutes to talk with the only things the other person saying is repeating back what they thought they heard to ensure accuracy. Almost everyone who CAN do the homework either 1) No longer needs therapy or 2) get a lot out of therapy Everyone else….seems to fail marital therapy. Communication and mutual understanding / care are soooo important.
When I read the book there was no solution to getting out of a bad relationship from a females perspective... happy for the woman who submitted and didn't have something bad happen but not all woman have it work trying these 5 techniques just saying it's not a magic pill and from a biblical standpoint abuse is immoral if it's at that point and then if u done this already to no avail go back to real thing and not the counterfeit unconditional love is patient and kind.... is the part where woman carry the weight of love on their shoulders like the author suggests really whats dentrramental here? ...rhetorical
My psychologist said: don't read the book, just understand the theory. And I think that is great advice as we've established that the book is very old fashioned and indeed focussing on women to create the solution to every problem. Also, the theory can give partners tools to talk about their needs and wants and desires, so I think it could be helpful as a vehicle to better communicate with each other.
I guess I've never thought of the 5 love languages as being so rigid. I always figured that, just as a person changes via time and circumstance, that they might have a somewhat dominant love language, but not immutable. I thought of it like communication suggestions, not commandments. Like... everything in moderation.
Same. Did you also learn about it by being told about it by a friend or relative, rather than even realizing it was from some rigidly confining book? I've found them very useful in talking about what we were hoping for more of from the other with my partner, but they're just ways of communicating about broadly related care/affection patterns.
I actually read the book and Chapman even states that it is not a rigid system and the languages have all sorts of dialects and we all have some kind of mix going in for us.
@@Rolepgeek I didn't know about the book until after I'd heard someone mention it, and I still haven't read the book. The 5 Love Languages stood out to me because it felt like (if you use it in a flexible way) an actually somewhat useful communication framework. And what I mean by flexible is that it's not used to define someone else or oneself, but rather to offer suggestions for alternate avenues of communication to help people solve conflicts and reach mutual understandings. But then, I tend to be a person who is perfectly willing to give someone an appreciative 'thank you' even for doing basic chores because no one wants to do that shit, we do it because we have to, and it can be nice to acknowledge it.
Agreed. All language and concepts are limiting to some degree or another. They're still useful as a heuristic. I think its more about how one holds it or relates to categorizations psychologically. Do we relate to them loosely or rigidly?
When I take the garbage out, my wife thanks me, and when she takes it out, I thank her. Yes, taking the garbage out is a normal adult thing to do. It's also boring and unpleasant, so when either of us does it, the other one gives thanks. We do so for many little things, and I think our relationship is much better for it. I'd hate for my chores and contribution to the household to be taken for granted, and the same goes for my wife.
If you only criticize your partner for the things they’re not doing and not showing appreciation, you’ll come off as a nag. Positive reinforcement of behaviors you want to see repeated is a very basic thing. It encourages the person to do the thing to see you happy rather than just go avoid your anger. You’re not making yourself appealing to live with if people are thinking of themselves as avoiding your inevitable nagging. And the dynamics of living alone & doing chores ultimately for yourself is completely different from living with other people & keeping a shared space clean, wherein there are multiple people generating trash with different attitudes about what constitutes cleanliness
To me, it's one of the least unpleasant chores unless I remember to do it after dark in winter the night before bin day as I have to go down two flights of stairs and into the communal garden to place it in communal bins. Normally, I do it on my way out somewhere to kill two birds with one stone. Making phone calls, though, is something I dread.
I agree but that's not her point. What she is saying is that the woman shouldn't have to encourage her partner to help, he should realise for himself that it is needed. The fact that she needs to behave this way stems from the fact that the burden of the chores is by default hers, not 50/50.
Yeah it kind of makes me think of those gratitude journal exercises people do, it's just nice to express thanks and appreciation throughout the day. It's just a shame that this sort of thing can be really one-sided in some relationships
@@robertamoriano6447 would she make the same argument to women in relationships where the man works hard outside the house and brings in the majority of the income? Or would she tow the liberal line of denigrating hetrosexual traditional men working and sacrificing to provide and protect for their families?
No piece of practical psychology is ever going to be scientifically valid, and that's what makes it popular. As long as people don't take it too seriously, everything is fine... the key is that everyone is able to act like any other personality and appreciate love coming in any way, but everyone has preferences, which explains why your best friend might be a boring or horrible person to others. Personally I find both of these theories fun to think about sometimes, and maybe even a bit useful, as long as you keep in mind that it's about preference and not about putting people into boxes. If you care for someone you will take the effort to understand what they like most and try to give it to them when possible, but putting them in a box, and saying for example that the world is divided into those who like chocolate and those who like chips is limiting at best and offensive at worst.
omg YES PLS. even supposed "cognitive function/jungian" mbti, though i guess more fleshed out than the myers-briggs theory, is also inherently flawed and still as pseudoscientifical in and of itself and i would like to hear more discussions about it (and also just how gatekeepy some people can be about mbti/mbti knowledge?? 💀💀)
Good to hear a critical perspective... I learned about the 5 LL in marriage preparation before my marriage to my wife. There are of course some useful things that unfortunately need to be learned for most men regarding not just doing something for a reward. That can really feel like keeping score which is also not healthy. I guess basically there's a lot of unlearning required it seems in current patriarchal societies.
🤦♂Doing things because you care about a person only gets you abused (Something that comes for free is perceived as having no value/If men do it, we're seen as weak thus cut off as anyone's potential partner). Also calling our society a patriarchal society now is crazy (Assuming you are referring to countries like US, UK, Australia/Patriarchal societies are mostly Middle Eastern and African). Even demonizing patriarchy makes no sense considering the fact that we wouldn't even be here sitting comfortably talking shit about it had it not existed. Let me ask you something, where did people get the idea that men are oppressors? Is it from the top 1% men that control the world or the 99% that live under them (It should be neither because it all served to advance human civilization/Some men governed and the majority served). Women only became angry at the "patriarchy" because life became comfortable enough for them to be independent and thought that option was always readily available (Funny because the patriarchy made their lives peachy, yet they want to talk shit about it/Bite the hand that freed you from your societal role). We had roles back then yes, like men provide/protect and women hold down the household. You think all those men that fulfilled their duties not just to their families but to their societies enjoyed every minute of it. You think men enjoyed being forced to labor all day or fight and die for their country. Women just didn't like the fact that they had a role to fulfill. At most I would say women were only oppressed for 20-35 years, not the entirety of mankind (1945-1980/Even in the 40's-50's most jobs were still too dangerous/harsh for women). You know why the first and the third waves of feminism were useless because the first came too early and only applied to the rich women of society who were able to live on their own (too early for the common woman/not many voted for change and not because they were suppressed but because they were focused on their roles) and the third had nothing else to fight about, if anything it was more of a fight for supremacy. I'm tired of this dumbass shit being common. All it takes is looking at the other side (men's) to understand that we did what we were supposed to, not because we liked it but because we had to. You never saw us creating a men's movement to start bitching about it (Ik there is one but its fair seeing how systemically we're being fucked over and oh so subtly/Still don't agree with it). Imagine if all men just said nope to fighting wars or being drafted during WW2, we would be living Nazi America now. Bitching got us nowhere.
But it's not the point of what she is saying, the point is that anyone would be happy to be appreciated regardless of ND status, most people don't like to do chores, and ND people just have a harder time with doing them, most ND traits are normal things most peiple go through taken to the extreme.
Yes but when anyone is in a relationship, including us ND folk, we're making a commitment. Your partner is your equal. They are not your boss and they are not your carer. Yes you should be able to depend on them but they should also be able to depend on you.
In general i agree that the 5 love languages are limiting and unideal... However, i 100% thank my partner for the little things they do around the house and they thank me. Obvs we should all be working together. The thanking is not a reward. Its an acknowledgement of the work each other are doing. I sometimes get stressed out and feel like im doing everything. If i think back though, and can list all the other things my partner did bc i acknowledged them every time, then i am often able to realize "oh im just burnt out right now, i need more help than usual" and then i can ask for that. Additionally, at least in the culture i grew up in, thanking is just polite. If my partner is handing me my dinner plate and i say "thank you", that is not a reward im giving them for doing something theyre supposed to do in our partnership anyway. I am being polite, bc when people give us food or do nice things for us in my culture we just say thank you afterwards. Maybe other people prefer different dynamics in their relationships, but I have seen parents and grandparents forgo these little things and focus on expectation, and then yell dismiss and become irritated with each other. For me and my partner its respect all the way down
I have spent years asking friends and situationships about their 5 love languages believeing it was a tool that would dramatically help our communication. It wasn't until a couple of months ago that a lgbtq friend sent me a book that expanded on this concept, and proposed more than a dozen languages more (Anne Hodder-Shipp's "Speaking from the heart"). I love how Alice described it at 09:45, thinking about love as a creative process that produces new subjectivity/ies. Recently I have been making a concious effort of "mixing" all these languages moment to moment, and listening to other people and their preferences taking into account their social, "cognitive" (because they could be neurodivergent people) and political context. Great essay, thank you Alice! :)
Thanks for the book rec! Looks like a good read and a great way to build on the concept, which was probably well intended, but seems fundamentally reductive and problematic
Everybody, man, woman, roomate, should be given a "thank you for doing that" when doing chores. I have experimented on it with great results. About the 5 love languages, you should not approach it like a complete explanation of how every relationship works. It is more of a framework for putting words on what ech partner need.
I think that there was some good intentions there originally. But you are right--trying to break something as complex as human relationships into simple boxes is going to make for overly simplistic categories. Always thought-provoking! Have a great week, Alice!
I've met too many people who used to take this Five Love Languages thing as some sort of holy truth and this was enough to keep me at safe distance from that.
My ex almost broke up with me when I told her I didn't believe in the concept of love languages, she said "How are you going to know how to express love then?"
I feel like if people took anything as "holy truth" so much that they think of it as absolute and pretty much stop discussion, growth, and understanding, it's a sign of more work needed. I personally quite appreciate FLL, but never seriously think of it as a must. It's helpful, as with many things in life.
@@MagisterialVoyager It’s definitely helpful because it kind of helped me being aware of what people can do to express their love and what boundaries you can set if they display any love language in a toxic way.
@@aquaaria3489that's fine, it's just not a universal truth, I don't particularly fluctuate to any of the 5 languages, I do all of them depending on the person and context, and I don't prefer any of them, nor does any of them come naturally to me, so I think we should all take it with a grain of salt and shouldn't dismiss people when it doesn't fit or work for them.
The five love language is a great conversation starter in what people think they need and what they think their partner needs. Is a way to simplify stuffs. Anyone who takes it like a unchanging box is wrong.
First off all you make some really great points. The only nit I have is your assumption that the problem with the lady and her trash taking out husband was just due to the patriarchy. Having been married over 20 years, I have found the following to be true: 1. both members of the couple feel like they are working hard to make the relationship succeed and the household successful. 2. we all appreciate being appreciated for this work.3. It is far too easy to see the all the things you are doing and see what is left undone as a failure of the other party to pull their weight. That last one is kind of a big one. There will always be things left undone, and it is best when a couple can find those things and find a way to get them done together or outsource them (like your "joke" about hiring a manager).
You are right in all your points, I just think you're not coming from the same perspective as her, hers is a more of a general perspective based on society issues, women are disproportionately responsible for house work in most of the statistics you find. I'm in Latin America, most men I know don't cook, don't clean, don't take care of their own children, don't wash their own clothes, it's either mother or wife who does all of this, they just work and that's the bulk of their responsibility, while the woman works and do all the rest and every time a man is different from this standard, a father who actually spends time and take care of the basic necessities of his children, they are praised like they are going above and beyond, so I think this is the implied part of her point.
But there are compelling reasons To think it is patriarchy. Ask that husband what their values are about how a man and woman should act in a relationship and all is clear. Yes both couples will FEEL like they are working hard. But if one of those people has an inherently unequal viewpoint, from decades of subliminal messaging. It can make you wonder whom really is doing the work. It was very sobering for me to realize how many patriarchal behaviors I took part in, until I read about the psychology. And I'm in no means the worst example of it, and I've only been alive as long as you've been married.
Yeah I agree with you! I think her points about the patriarchy are 100% valid, AND if we don't celebrate the small things then life becomes such a slog
I was down to make fun of the pseudoscience of love language, but I kind of had to roll my eyes at her inability to understand the concept of positive reinforcement, which was why the compliment thing was a logical way for the wife to get her husband to do more chores
I wouldn't dismiss this entirely. Yes, it can be rigid if you stick to it to a T, but there is also some good advice and guidance for better communication and understanding other people's behaviour. I would get really mad at people for not wanting to spend time with me and annoyed at compliments, but I also needed to understand that people have different ways of showing appreciation and I just need to communicate my needs better.
Me and my boyfriend talked about the love languages when we started dating. We thought our love language was quality time, but we really just use all of them all the time. It works for us.
Thank you Alice for always articulating what some of us struggle to verbalize! I think that the way the 5 love languages are limiting also extends to the common belief that saying "I love you" to your partner/parent/sibling/friend should only be done during "special" instances. As if there's a shortage of how we are supposed to express love! That's not supposed to be like that, love is abundant and we should freely express it as much as we can. It made me think of how much people equate love as something like a ration. Love shouldn't be scarce it is expansive! Insightful essay as always, thank you Alice for this :))
My ex was very fond of this book and philosophy, and convinced me to take it seriously with her. Only eventually I discovered that she wasn't concerned about how I figured into the dynamic, she just wanted me to be ever cognizant of her in every way, and soon I had no time to show myself any attention.
Personally love languages help me with communicating with my closest friends. My love language is to serve and take care of my friends, "fix" problems for them etc. I don't like touching or being touched and I'm uncomfortable with praise, and so I also don't give verbal affirmations. Understanding that one of my best friends likes gifts and really needs verbal affirmation and also likes cuddles has helped us to discuss our boundaries. Before I got frustrated when they ignored all the service I did for them, as they took it for granted, but now they've learned to appreciate it more and also when I'm not in the mood they make food for us both or something they know makes me feel appreciated. And I try to remind them verbally of how much I love and appreciate them, even though it feels weird to me as I wouldn't like that myself. And as I don't like cuddling, but I know they do, so when they're in real need, upset, then if I'm in an okay head space I will sooth them with physical touch. It's about compromises and finding out how to best match your mismatched needs. So whilst sure for some people these will have been affected by the cultural gender based binary norms they grew up in, personality is also in affect, so this video felt a bit too over simplified which is ironic as any personality typings are simplifications. But that's why they're good starting points for self reflection and communication. And for most people if I say my love language is serving others they get it better than if I tell them I have a Virgo stellium in my birth chart, but essentially they are the same thing.
Totally agree! Most people I encounter don't have a very good grasp on their relationship needs and tend to get in endless fights. To abstract and simplify their needs and problems in a model like that has been life saving. Most of the people can't tell you why this is upsetting for them. They just expect you to do and think exactly as they think. So it's been very transformative to "show" that people expect different things. And this is mostly women with women, so this has no patriarchal context tbh. She makes a lot of statements in this video which she never proves. Why is it bad to simplify something? Ever heard of models? Those are meant to show the world in a simplified way to be more understandable and give a tool to work with. Why is it bad to save a relationship? I'd also say that the example she showed with the trash is more of a problem because it's basically manipulation and they're not openly communicating with each other. The five love languages are not the primary problem, if it at all. If we had emotional education in school I'd agree we should expect more than this model. But so far even this is for most people a barely to understand concept. I think it doesn't deserve the critic made here.
I agree with what both of you wrote. Just some petty remarks about the horoscope and these theories: they are not the same thing at all. 1) the horoscope is set at birth and never changes, while personality and love languages do 2) personality theories and practical psychology describe reality, while the horoscope is saying that the stars influence you. There is reasons why the horoscope works to a certain extent. For example if I am born in January I'll probably be older than most people in my cohort, which will affect my development in similar ways to all other people who were born in January, and make us similar in certain ways. Believing that the stars have anything to do with this is a religion. It is both funny and sad to see people ridiculing religions and believing the horoscope because these days, that's the more trendy alternative
@@AsdrubaleRossi 1) the planets move around making different aspects to each other all the time and changing signs while doing that. Your birth chart is fixed, but whilst you might have had your sun in aries and your mercury in scorpio when you were born, they won't be in the same placements for most of your life. The sun once a year during your birth month every year sure, but for all the planets it takes different times for them to move around the sun, and we on earth don't stay put either. This is also why the outer planets are sometimes called "generational" planets as they move slower so there's gonna be generations with the same placements of, for example Saturn, which is about boundaries and authority, and you can really see those kind of shifts easily if you just look at history and peoples attitudes changing around those themes. Personal planets (the closer ones) don't affect the collective in that way, but more on the personal day to day level, although the Barbie-movie phenomena happened now during the venus retrograde which is still on going, but whilst it is a global phenomena, the effects have been in personal relationships (people breakign up because of the film, yeah it's wild). I've only dipped my toe in this stuff, but whilst saying ones birth chart (or "horoscope") is fixed is true, it's a constantly shifting system with a lot of variables and if someone thinks all they need is their sun sign, it just means they don't know jack about astrology. Astrology is just one system (a really, really old one) to help better understand personality, preferences, habits, comfort zones, gifts and even daily sifts in mood. The same as any simplified personality typings. 2) Psychology is a pseudo science and personality theories are no more real than Freuds penis envy theory. Jungian ideas about the shadow self whilst a lot more credible, still no more scientific as they cannot be proven. Psychology is a guessing game as it's flawed people who don't even understand themselves trying to help other flawed people to understand themselves. You can't prove the mind excists, so scientifically speaking psychology is a pseudo science. It doesn't make it wrong, but it doesn't make it true either. Who's ridiculing religion here? Sounds to me your bias is showing. Personally, I do see merit in psychology as I'm not a science-believer (meaning a person who doesn't understand the scientific method) and I'm hopeful one day we can explain and prove in a satisfactory way the theories and things observed via psychology, hell, we may even prove the effect the movements of the planets have on us one day ;) I jest, but truly, I personally do not mind not knowing or fully understanding why the moon pulls the tides, but I know it has been proven by some folk fiercly smarted than myself and have chosen to trust that, so in a sense, I don't know the moon affects the tides, I _believe_ it does because I've been told that with evidence that I personally deem enough. And I don't see a reason why the moon wouldn't affect us too as we're mostly water. I feel the effects (always have, even before I knew what it was), and astrology has explained some personality quircks a lot better and with more nuance than any love language or other personality theories I've come across, so I don't mind if it's a miraculous coincidence or the actual effect of massive space orbs and gas giants moving about 🤷 Astrology is as much about legends, stories and archetypes as any personality theories, just with more math involved. I would classify it as a branch of philosophy more than religion, but to each their own. As that is the point of astrology; we're all unique and should learn to know and understand ourselves so we can live more harmonously with each other. Something it has in common with psychology.
When someone says they don't like one of the love languages I view it as some kind of unhealed trauma. Not accepting love in any form is just suspect to me. And I think it enables people not to work on themselves bc they found a new pseudo science method of intellectualizing
@@tZork7 you can't work on yourself before first acknowledging there is an issue to be worked on. Someone with unhealed and concealed (subconcious or conciously avoidant) trauma would not be able to recognise their preferences in love languages because you need to self reflect and do the work in order to do that. And childhood trauma does affect us in such deep ways that even if you work through them, the preferences may still be there for the rest of your life (not to mention cultural preferences). I know that partly I don't like or trust verbal praise is due to a narcissitic father who only criticiced so if anyone complimented something I did it made me mildly anxious and my kneejerk reaction is to deflect to another topic, downplay my achievement or just not belive them. Because I was taught so early on that I'm always wrong and nothing I do is ever good enough, but even if it is there's no pat on the back, just the relief of not being yelled at. From close friends when we're alone I can take praise and listen to what they like about what I've done, and not just wait for the critism, probably because I can trust when they praise me one-on-one that it's genuine, whilst pupblicly praising can just be for show. That's trauma, but it's hard to say where I begin and my trauma ends, you know? And I don't consider it unhealed, I'm very aware of it and I've spent many years working on it, there's no emotional reaction anymore, but that doesn't mean that my personal preferences that were affected by said trauma will ever change. Early trauma is pretty hard to separate from, as that is what shaped you into who you are today, and the important thing is to not let it stop you from living your best life. I don't need verbal confirmation about my skills, and I don't need to learn to like it in order to live a full and happy life. I also come from a culture that is very modest and sees boastful people as crude and frankly embarrasing, so that too plays a part in why publicly given praise feels uncomfortable to me. So it's not all trauma based preference but also cultural. Frankly, saying that everyone should accept all forms of love given/offered sounds creepy af. But maybe that's because I'm asexual and people tend to not believe we excist just because they cannot imagine not being turned on by other people. I'm simply uninterested. If you're not interested, you're not missing out. I have no FOMO about cuddles or verbal praise or gifts, because I don't want them. Trying to force me into wanting or liking something I do not would be abusive, reminds me of all the "pray the gay away" stuff. Not everyone needs or wants the same things, and we're all so unique it's silly to think that there's any "normal" set of preferences (especially something made up like the five love languages) that would apply to everyone.
The video came out of left field for me but was very interesting as I grew up in a religious context, and love is the core theme of Christianity for a lot of things and just as many misunderstandings regarding it. Thanks for the kickoff to some thinking.
I happen to have read the book as well. They were very clear that there aren't only five and these were just broad classifications. They also mentioned that what you enjoy may change in as your life changes. I think the book has been 'horoscoped' but the whole point was to teach people that what their partner needs to feel loved may be different from what they need, and they should look into those expressions to help them love eachother better.
Telling your husband how mich you appreciate his taking out the garbage is not so mich about words of affirmation in my opinion, but rather about something like weaponised incompetence or getting a huge compensation for something that may feel effaminating.
I took my long-term love to take this test in person when we were in college, and he dismissed it. I want ALL of it, he said. That's part of what I love about him. ❤
I think there is value in categorizing the ways we show affection because it allows to be more deliberate in how we choose to show love in a way that is most appreciated by the other person. BUT typecasting yourself as having only one or one main love language despite the context is the equivalent of astrology for women or men calling themselves sigma males.
I’ve noticed the love languages don’t hold true for neurodivergent people (like me) because we express and experience love in unconventional ways, like penguin pebbling or info-dumping. In my dating experience, people who relied on the five love languages had trouble understanding or even picking up on me showing them affection, and they got frustrated because I didn’t behave or feel how I was “supposed to” in a relationship. It was a strange position to be in, and enough to put me off the five love languages for a while.
Yes! Was looking to see if someone mentioned this! I think it can be harmful to act as if these "love languages" are factual because it does not take into consideration how different brains process and show love. Penguin pebbling, info dumping, and parallel play are all ways that I show my love to others. Having terms to describe how we show love is a good idea, but trying to fit human behavior into specific boxes is always going to be a bad idea. Especially when some people only consider NTs when talking about human behavior.
As a suspected (by my psychologist) neurodivergent person whose main love language is bad jokes, jumpscaring people, insulting them with dumb insults and kicking them in the butt randomly, alongside surprise hugs, info-dumping, oversharing and checking how they are feeling, I agree. I also ask a lot of questions as a way to show my interest, and like to give people gifts, but only because I notice they generally make them happy (not everybody is ready for my random ways of showing affection, and not everybody is okay with physical touch or take my very dumb insults as the jokes they are, expecially because I noticed I tend to befriend other ND people and they also have their own unique ways of showing and perceiving love, and maybe they don't understand my sarcasm, expecially in the beginning).
@@TinyGhosty Exactly! I love having words for what I’m feeling and experiencing, but people are so diverse and creative and I think it’s sad to limit the ways people “should be” expressing love and affection
“Love Languages” in general are just dumb pop psychology. People are complex and show/receive/acknowledge affection in all kinds of complicated ways & these love language categories are just making people pathologize stuff like “I enjoy it when my romantic partner touches/spends time with me/says nice things to etc”
I've had similar thoughts about this since realizing that all the women living in heterosexual relationships that I've talked to about this has acts of services as their love language... None of the men and queer women on the other hand had that particular love language. This is obviously highly anecdotal, but it does make you wonder.
I remember when this book was experiencing new popularity in the early-mid 2000s, and at the time, I read it and thought it seemed fine. I think I took away from it the principle that you and your partner should communicate in constructive ways with each other and be specific about your needs and wants, which is what my spouse and I tend to do. Being aware of what feels especially loving to you and to your partner can also be useful. My spouse and I both appreciate gifts when we're given them, but our personal preferences are to select our own gifts at holidays and birthdays rather than surprise each other, for example, so "gift-giving" isn't as much of a priority for either of us as it might be for other people, and this is something we're both aware of with each other. But that doesn't mean that gifts can't feel thoughtful and loving, just that they're not a go-to for us. But looking at the book now, it seems to encourage playing games with your partner more than I noticed at age eighteen or nineteen. The "give your husband a compliment every time he does something helpful" seems a lot like housetraining a dog rather than navigating an equitable relationship. Why should you have to manipulate your partner with compliments just to get them to take out the garbage? That seems patently absurd.
I think the point is that being "over suspicious" of each other's attitude/acts, assuming that it is a manipulation strategy, it isn't beneficial for a relationship either (of any kind, it could be work, friendship, etc.) If I tell my partner that I need words of appreciation, should I then assume that every time she says it to me, she may be "trying to get" something else? it´s just control? can't that be an honest display of affection and empathy for the needs of another? Of course any test is necessarily an oversimplification of what it's to be a person, but there are general issues that, more or less, everyone needs (the classic complaints/scolding between couples are language issues (You never say sweets things to me ) or physical (I would like more/less displays of affection)
I dislike it intensely. If your love language is gift giving, it's annoying or frustrating to someone who lives in cramped accommodation, has too much stuff, or is moving house soon.
Funny that I hear “love languages” used as a legitimate term amongst fellow leftists often, and it suddenly makes sense as something a conservative baptist would promote through such a heteronormative traditionalist agenda, really appreciate the illuminating content you make! 💫
I do find systems of interests, personality, etc useful in having a manageable number of options and ideas to move forward in a particular instance. Labels - over-identification-with, used prejudicially, seen as static, etc - there are many ways to misuse a tool. That being said, I noticed the love languages seemed to be used against me in the past more so than other common systems. Also by the same type of people who torpedo a date after an astrology charting, or a long-term relationship after a chat with a ‘psychic’. They found many ways to blame everything but themselves for their hasty decisions. Decisions uninformed by simply using the actual love language of intentionally communicating with their partner.
Before watching too far in i'll give my thoughts on love language, then come back and add an edit when I've finished watching your view - for me love language stuff has always been somewhere between more helpful than astrology and less helpful than Attachment Theory. I think it's a useful tool to explain what you value in a friendship or relationship because they can always look SO DIFFERENT. I mean as an extreme example, there are married couples who live full time in different countries and barely meet up, but they talk every day and remain in love - they might say their love language is quality time or words of affirmation or gift/service etc, and not be so fussed about something like physical touch. It's a good way to assess yourself in simpler terms and anticipate problems rather than letting them explode - personally I've found it helpful as an autistic person with PTSD, because I find emotions hard to identify - I have discovered that I show love primarily through acts of service (for me this presents as wanting to take care of the other person, make them tea and offer food, helping them solve problems, buy them helpful gifts or experiences) and when receiving love I really need quality time, even if that's just texting. The longer I spend away from someone the more any emotion I had becomes detached and hard to grapple with, plus knowing the other party wants to spend time with me and will make an effort to do so (like I'm not always having to be the one planning or asking) is very calming for me and I feel appreciated 🤷 both in friendships and romantic partnerships mind you. where the problem arrives is when people 'diagnose' their behaviour and never interrogate it, never ask why they behave this way and if it might be better to adapt.
The points you bring up are interesting and thought-provoking. Having some common perception of how we generally express and receive love, however, is not necessarily wrong. They don’t have to be perceived as boxes that limit us, but rather a baseline which help us explore ourselves and our partner.
It never surprised me that a Baptist pastor came up with such a reductive, simplistic panacea for the complexities of human relationships. To them, there's no nuance in life, there are no labyrinthine twists and turns in the human condition, and everything we want can be distilled down to a few fundamental needs that require feeding...but mind you, he says, pulling out his love language chart, it must be the right kind of feeding.
Are you trying to be ironic or are you just a hypocrite. How can you make such simplistic and reductive claims about an entire diverse and varied group of people? Do you not realize in life there is nuance?
Your comment, and this video tbf, is resting on the idea that the love languages and those who adopt the idea of them, are purporting this as some.sort of concrete, exact truth/science. It's not meant to be such. Like most concepts created by human thought, it's simply a framework for better making sense of something, so obviously, generalisations will be used and it may not apply to everyone equally. And that's ok.
Erich Fromm, in his Art of Loving, asserts that loving is a skill, and in that exploring oneself and the other person and improving or shifting your acting accordingly.
Jessica should get a local painter to paint her sitting room thereby contributing to the financial structure of the community ThIs will allow her and her husband to do fun stuff together rather than trying to show their love for each other by doing jobs around the house 😂😂
I understand that the rigidness of this theory can lead to its demise, but I can’t agree with everything said here. The reality is some people are not very physical, while others may feel most loved sharing their personal space (touch). Or some could spend all day with their partner & feel most loved, while others can love from afar (quality time).. etc. There are so many situations where this theory can help. As humans, we change and evolve & our love languages may not stay the same, but I feel like there can be something to learn here, and gain relationship satisfaction if we are understanding & fulfilling our partners wants correctly. I agree it shouldn’t be taken as rigidly, but I wouldn’t toss it in the bin completely… or blame it on the patriarchy.
Great, thought-provoking video as always Alice. There is a great episode of the If Books Could Kill podcast debunking Chapman's Five Love Languages book which I would recommend to anyone interested :)
Nice work going from the five languages to this need of categorising, and the need of an authority. For a lot of people, it feels like if something is not explained or labelled, it doesn't exist (or less). Isn't this why the whole self help book genre exists? It's what works the best on audible it seems. We are at an age when we can be anything, yet the crave of being told what we are is at its peak.
There's a parallel here to learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) which is widely embraced by educators yet is just bunk. Teachers might find it effective in practice because when using it they offer students multiple approaches to one concept, thereby enriching the students' learning. It is an inefficient and misguided way to improve learning, but if your base practice is bad then even this method can improve results. Sorta like replacing blood letting with homeopathy.
"Replacing bloodletting with homeopathy" is such a clever way to look at this pseudoscience garbage that apparently helped people because it was their first exposure to the idea that they should try to communicate
Thank you so much for this. People keep acting like 5 love languages are a fact and asking me which one I have or concluding that I have a specific one and then there is always an awkward conversation where I try to explain that it doesn't apply to me. Now I can just send them this video!
Well, finished watching the vid, so here’s my opinion. I don’t think that love should be categorized into these definitive boxes, these rigid boundaries as to how one must experience such a complex and nuanced emotion and process such as love is. However, I do feel that for to some extent, we can use these categories to help understand ourselves, for the benefit of our relationships and self awareness. Instead of regarding these as five, distinct categories, we could observe some patterns in what kind of affection we value and want the most, and how we express affection too. Everyone experiences love differently. Instead of boxing us off into categories of how we experience it, it would be better to identify general but not defining or rigid trends or patterns in what we want, and understand them not only on a psychological but also socio-political basis. Instead of defining the reasons for our perceived needs based on purely psychological or political reasons, we must think deeper and understand that many, complicated reasons may influence what we want/expect/are conditioned to expect from a relationship. Gender roles and other societal constructs certainly play an important role in this, and so do the more personal, psychological factors revolving around our own personality. Furthermore, our perception of what we need from love may change depending throughout our lives, both long term and short term: what kind of affection we need at the moment may vary based on what we’re feeling at that moment, what our partner in general does or does not do often, what we’ve been craving for in a while, etc. Long term changes may be influenced by age, general personal growth, experiences with previous partners, our changing environments, etc. In conclusion, i think that for some purposes, it would be beneficial to understand how one personally experiences, values and expresses love - not by boxing it into definitive categories but looking deeper in and identifying certain major aspects, patterns or trends in certain qualities which we tend to value the most, and understanding them both in terms of socio-political lens and a psychological lens. Like all these psychological and ‘self understanding’ trends, most notably things like MBTI, there might be some basis in fact or general, loose trends which may help us to a small extent in better understanding who we are, which are taken way too seriously by people, who end up treating it like boxed categories which define who they are completely, instead of different, varyingly sized fragments which are only a few mixed parts of the larger mosaic that is ourself, our identity, our personality.
My main issue with all of this is that on one end, having a guide that explains what you're feeling is universally a good thing. Being able to tell someone, that quality time is a love language of mine and for them to know and understand "Oh they just enjoy hanging out with me, my presence is all that's needed.". Is incredibly and undeniably nice. Learning the roots of it has been really nice, however I do believe the concepts of them have taken a completly different form in todays media landscape. It's gone from gospel to, an esoteric way to describe your wants and needs to another in a way that can be understood. People always say "Just communicate to your partner!" In some...pathological way. Without ever considering. What if they just, can't?! What if they person has issues communicating their feelings and emotions to someone else? Do we just. Doom them to a lonely life because they aren't as expressive as we might be at expressing our emotions? The idea of completly discounting a concept because it's origin is staked in a rigid belief system is...not really that great. It ignores all of the good that those simple concepts brings in favor of painting it as ultimately reductive. I've had a lot of partners that honestly, just straight up. Sucked at communicating, they weren't good at it and could never communicate what they feel for the life of them. Those were some really rough relationships. But even then, I knew their love languages and through that I was able to communicate and connect with them in meaningful ways which helped improve the health of the relationship itself. Without even reading any books, just with the surface level knowledge of love languages it helped tremendously.
People who are bad at communicating should be given the tools to improve, communication is a skill and every skill requires practice, that's why I think therapy should be easier to get, they should no be doomed to be lonely but not being able to communicate effectly does kind of already do that, you can be in a relationship and be lonelier than if you weren't. Also, I don't think is always easy to pinpoint other people love language, because I don't think it's an universal thing, and also even if you do it can be icky, if you're managing your partner out of their shortcomings with what you perceive as their love language and ca be incredibly tiring for you and at the worst case scenario outright manipulate and abusive.
@@bluester7177 What I'm saying is that we shouldn't patronize the options people do have for expressive their emotions. Even if its something as arbitrary as Love languages. Anything that makes communication easier should be used, regardless of it's background or where it comes from. I'm not trying to pinpoint anyone's love language or anything like that. As I said, I listen to them and what they're telling me. I don't know if you've met anyone like this but there are some people that under any emotional distress like say, a disagreement or serious discussion will just. Shut down on the spot. How does someone overcome this without expensive therapy? Obviously for a relationship with such an individual requires a lot of patience. You're right it does get tiresome, but to deny that such things have not been beneficial to myself and my relationships would be 100% incorrect. I also do not think adhering to someone's LL's all the time is healthy either. Because you might be as the video mentions rewarding them for benign crap, and teaches people to chase validation instead of just being a decent and respectable partner.
No but like I literally need all love languages. We all do. However, it is true that we are better at showing certain love languages more than others. My dad definitely does acts of service a lot more than the other ones. My mom likes to give gifts and words of affirmations. I like to do quality time! But we all need them to have a good relationship!
Just because you buy a TOURIST GUIDE it doesn't mean you have to visit every local attraction and/or in the order it's in the guide. Also it is something that should be discussed within a couple and not only one side (mostly the women) trying to their it's best. I want, and feel like that my partner has the RIGHT to know (and not trying to blindly guess ) that if I'm sad, physical touch or gifts won't cheer me up. Words of affirmation will. If he tries in the "wrong" way and my mood doesn't change he will feel demotivated to try anything after a few attempts. Please note that I have not read the book - like most of the folks, therefore on that specific topic I can't form a personal opinion.
I absolutely agree, but i still think its good to thank EACH OTHER for doing what they do, even if its just taking the garbage out, cause it makes the other person feel that their work is seen and appreciated idk. My ex used to be the one to cook pretty much every day and i would still thank him everyday when we sat down to eat, eventhough thats how we had split the tasks and it was his job to cook pretty much
I've always considered things like love languages, mbti, etc, as a tool for understanding that two people can look at the same situation and see completely different things, and that's alright. Some people learn this easily, and others need more convincing to actually internalize this. Things like this also give us language to begin the conversation. Also, there's a distinction that is important with these systems. Some of them talk about quality, like 3d, and some are more like a geographical map. Your love language is whatever, but it doesn't discuss the quality of your ability to speak that language. It's interesting to remember the origin of where things came from though. There are so many ideas that are rooted in so many problematic things.
the 5 love languages is one of those preconceptions / clichés about love that are SO engrained in how we think about love that I never even thought of questioning it! you did such an interesting debunking of it, thanks for keeping me on my toes :,)
@@talideon hm maybe not - i'm born in 2000 though, so I feel like by the time I grew up and learnt about love it was already a taken-for-granted "tool" people in my surroundings used to "understand" love!
@@talideon "can we really describe that as ingrained?" Yes we can. The love languages is not a novel innovation. It is just a formal commercialized publication of assumptions that western society has believed in all along. Its rooted in Christianity, long held gender stereotypes and justified with modern sounding psychological language. Our predisposition to believe in it is what allowed the love language concept become so popular.
I've never understood this hate of giving your partner praise or positive reinforcement. I'm currently living with my partner and whenever she does chores/house work I praise her and let her know how much I appreciate her and she does the same for me when I do them. Is that really such a bad thing? I don't care if she or I are doing the bare minimum, we still appreciate the effort none the less.
@@captainkidd22 They never said praise is a bad thing. The bad thing is having a shitty partner who doesn't do the chores *without* being praised. Like a child
As a socioligist who grew up as the kid of an Evangelical pastor (in the super conservative Hungary in the 1990s), I can 100% agree with your critique of love languages. And all sorts of individualising pop psycho categories (Myers Briggs, enneagram, horoscope etc). We all have the possibility to grow beyond these and discover independent reality. I think however, that these categories were a starting point for many couples in the church to begin to reflect on their needs and relationship -at all. I think it is important to understand Chapman's influence on church counselling as a progressive step, and imagine how the normative climate of the churches were much behind the 90s, I would say, it was like other places in the world in the beginning if the 1960s. Let me explain :) As I grew up, my dad and I used to have long discussions about marriages - something he had similar insights about like Chapman did, as he talked to hundreds of couples during his career. The couples in the church often had many problems, that came from systemic oppression, the inadequacy of their partnering as well as individual problems they carried. The church that time was dealing with its extremely repressive legacy of a set of neoconservative teachings about marriage and gender roles. Many people had just began to realise how destructive and dehumanising these teaching were. After this, they realised, that the people who promoted them were absolutely not worthy of trust and third, they began to critique them with correct theological arguments. But the damage was great. Whenever people talked about a marriage, it was somehow always miserable ( I wonder why...). People in church had previously never been encouraged to pursue romantic love or pleasure just for the joy of it. Everything was centred around the "service of the Lord". The "Call" was the most important factor in making decisions together. Happyness in itself was not really a thing. If someone had a loving relationship, they were truly lucky. Chapman's very simplistic teachings were one of the first glimpse of hope, because they meant, that people can pursue an affectionate relationship just for the sake of cultuvating love. These are the steps and concepts of babies compared to the sophisticated arguments and complex thought that was going on outside the church for a long time, but it was liberating at the time. It was easy to explain to simple people who would not have been open to intellectual discussions. It was still apolitical as you pointed out, but it changed the way couples related to each other. It changed their vision about what could there be. And many people did not stop there. They discovered, that there is more to discover. That discovery is good . This was revolutionary I think. Not enough, but much better than before. Actually I think that compared to the neoconservative repressive teachings, Gary Chapman's depoliticised, managerial approach is still political. It decentralised the power and placed the accountability on the couple, instead of the church leader. Turning right against the teachings was not possible within church, because the theology was still developing. This was a shift that allowed people to take their marriage out from the influence sphere of the church and liberate it from the service language. And to just have it for themselves for the first time. Depoliticising and politicising are both political. We are always political;) The implicit critical nature of teachings like this, unfolded in the next generation's attitudes. Fast forward to the kids who grew up in these families: I can assure you that we are all very critical of individualising these problems. In small churches in Hungary, now we openly talk about patriarchy, neoliberalism and the pressure of conforming to the traditional gender roles, in church and in family life. We feel alienated from the political alliances of the churches and can clearly see that it is always old white guys that do not need to be accountable. We also openly talk about the terrible treatment of LGBTQ+ people had gotten from homophobic church communities, and we do not really find our place where it is prescribed. We are not alone though. Older ladies in the church are on our side too. We all believe that Jesus, the reason why we want to be "Christians" has been much different to the face that the church shows today. So, to wrap it up, your critique is valid. These categories are annoying. but there is much more to this. Christians, asa category can also be developed. We are also ever changing and not as monolithic as it seems. xx
As someone from the town where this dude lives and wrote the book. Thank you! Everyone is obsessed with it, Christian and non Christian alike. I prescribed to it in the past but in my relationships (in practice) it made them feel synthetic or not genuine. I would perform acts I didn’t actually mean, and I didn’t want someone to give physical or any affection just because they thought they had to. It loses its meaning and the relationships just became check mark tasks no different than “don’t forget to send that work email”
i've never taken the love languages concept as like a one size fits all thing, they are just basics that hopefully get people into sorta understanding nd verbalizing their wants in a relationship. i'm an extremely touchy person and i have met women who do not like that and mostly its interpreted as being clingy. Everyone being familiar with the love language concept actually helps demystify or break gender norms often associated with love, the current version imo has helped foster inclusive open convo about love that isnt tied to gender norms.
While I agree that there are more than 5 Love Languages and they are limiting as they don't account for changing circumstances and situations, I think it can be helpful as a guide to understanding the people that we love, to ultimately bring us closer to them. For example, let's say someone tends to make breakfast for their loved one every morning but doesn't use their words to express love, and their loved one who prefers to be told they are loved may think their loved one does not love or appreciate them due to not being told they are valued as often as they would like. In this example, one person prefers words of affirmation and the other prefers acts of service. The words of affirmation person would then benefit from understanding that the acts of service person shows love differently. That's not to say that people should use this as an excuse to not show people love like they need to, but rather use it to bring understanding. The acts of service person can then consciously use their words more to show love, because they understand how the other person prefers to be loved
I actually really like the model - like every model it breaks down a complex set of rules/relations into a somewhat graspable concept. I also do actually believe that the dominant love language is worth something talking about - especially the idea that you may be affirming or touching your partner a lot, while he/she actually just wants more quality time with you or a few gifts sometimes is quite interesting. So you can literally try your best, yet your partner won't feel loved. Also the words "love is a decision" are very powerful and in my experience 100% true. No chemicals work magic for 40y. So you need to commit and work FOR love.
thank you for talking about this! i grew up fundie-lite and i heard the 5 love languages at church way before the secular world started talking about it
Thinking of love as magical and unknowable does not protect you against oppression or abuse. If anything it means defaulting to traditional, patriarchal, ideals. You subconscious is not grabbing some image of pure love out of the ether, it is getting it from existing culture. So if anything a scientific approach has the potential to free you from patriarchal assumptions.
I get the purpose of the video but it missed the mark for me. As someone with a master’s in marriage and family therapy, the Five Love Languages are well know in therapy circles as being pop psychology to borderline pseudoscience. It dresses up a very basic human concept. It feels good to be noticed and appreciated! Julie Gottman, who is one part of the absolute juggernaut of couple’s research (at least in the US, there is not a couple’s therapist who doesn’t know the Gottmans) nailed it. Context matters because people don’t actually have a specific love language. They just want their partner (and the people in their lives in general) to appreciate them, notice them, and love them. More than anything, when people tell me that The Five Love Languages helped them, I say great. But from what I can tell what happened is a person actually started making effort in the relationship. They actively tried. They put some energy and thought into a person in their life and it *shocker* made the person feel better and improved the relationship in some way. Edit: I will touch on the type of love languages typically ascribed to men and women. It turns out research actually shows that one person doesn’t just feel loved by one particular love language and actually both men and women crave physical affection, words of affirmations (validation from their partner), thoughtful gifts, and etc. It isn’t a gendered or heteronormative thing at all. People like to feel loved and appreciated in many different ways and context matters. Okay, I am done. I could really talk about this for hours but Gary Chapman took a very simple concept and repackaged it and tried to make it way more complicated than it actually is.
I think the repacked simple idea with complicated undertones seems to be a lot of the self help market, I guess people juat want ro be told how to fix their peoblems easily and over explaining simple things make it sound easy.
I’ve been the patient in hundreds of therapy sessions with probably half a dozen therapists (freudians, cbt, dbt and more) and it has helped me quite a bit, so I’m not completely hating on it. But with respect, I’m curious to know where you found this high horse that you’re riding on because the average therapist in my experience is either loaded with stupid common sense advice that any child could give you (you should sleep more, you should eat better, we need to learn how to communicate more effectively) or their own version of pseudoscientific nonsense (“practice mindfulness” 😂). At least Chapman’s advice costs a one time payment of $20 rather than years of larger recurring payments. 😆
This was a pretty dense video for me so I had to rewatch it a few times to get your points, but thanks for your thoughts. I've never liked the love languages because, as you said, they are situational. In fact all of this pseudo-scientific genre of love languages, personalities, Hogwarts house quiz, etc. are necessarily one dimensional and too restrictive to appropriately capture the human experience. I appreciated the commentary that they also superimpose on top of societal norms and can inadvertently reinforce negative dynamics of certain cultural norms. Unfortunately, I've seen lots of individuals, women in particular, make a single "love language" central to their identity, and then use it as a cudgel to demand a particular behavior from another. From your example of the woman whose husband didn't do the dishes or paint the bedroom, as you note, the true problem is that the husband doesn't help as he should, likely due to patriarchal norms. But it also makes me uncomfortable that the wife used love bombing to make him more pliable to her demands, and not try to convince him that he should help because he lives in a household and a partnership. It's nuanced, though, because it IS good to express appreciation often. What bothers me here is that she did it with the express purpose of trying to get him to paint the bedroom or whatever. If this were one of the women in my own family, she might in the future tell her husband that he must do a certain chore because her love language is "acts of service", and argue, frequently, that he doesn't love her if he doesn't do the chore she wants done. To me, this is manipulation. Why not instead argue that because they are in a partnership, she needs his help in the joint project of maintaining a household? Why need to question his devotion to her in exchange for a particular chore? But I'm also uncertain if anything should change about how this women did things. I suspect that women in particular latch on to this love language pseudoscience because it gives them some amount of power in relationships where patriarchal norms otherwise disenfranchise them. Similar to how psychics, witches, essential oils folks, and crystal healers all lean strongly female, perhaps because these practices empower those women to reject the patriarchal counterparts in institutional religion and reclaim spirituality for themselves. It's tricky then because on the one hand, these women SHOULD be empowered, but on the other hand, the means by which they gain power are often manipulative or fraudulent. Thoughts or pushback?
I definitely feel far less horrid for being the irritating one in the group who seems to over analyze everything. As an American, there seems to be an almost capitalistic flavor to the way love/romance is seen here. A desire to get more bang for your buck, the best bargain. Getting complimented for the least amount of effort. Being admired for almost no reason, or the illusion of one. The intangible exchange rate on time to money, which seems to place money much higher. The interview like process choosing a mate, and the crazy means of eliminating all risk from the process. I could go on and on. Thank you for your enlightening videos that sate my need for conversation for at least a moment.
I think the value there is finding words to express the different expectations of love between partners. Eg if one partner craved physical touch but their partner only expressed love through giving gifts, then yeah that's gonna leave both parties frustrated! But taking it as anything more than a tool for understanding that the way folks both express their love and how they wish to receive love, yeah nah it'd definitely not useful than anything more than that!
I generally feel these sorts of things could serve to help explore how you feel about certain things and situations. As long as you don't take them seriously. If the thought of thanking your spouse is that insanely foreign to you it might provide some enlightenment. Hopefully you can grow more. Also, your father must be so proud.
Co workers mentioned this in conversation several weeks ago and now this video. Universe and telecom companies in cahoots and eves dropping on personal conversations.
i've always been against the concept of the love languages . i totally felt like it had the same goals and effects as all the trendy "aesthetic" . at first it starts out as "healthy " lifestyle where a human being can understand more things about himself and the people around him so that everyone get all "happy" but honestly the more it gets popular and trendy the more people get obssesed with it in a way where they want to "belong" and have this feeling of "control" over themselves when in reality the only one controling here is society who treats life as something linear that have to be in a sepecific category .for example me as someone who tend to express and receive love in so many ways i couldn't fit in this love languages thing , love is supposed to be something you just FEEL no matter how it is done, if the gesture is healthy and makes you happy then it is love that's it , and as a simple human you can constently crave diffrent types of love ,isn't rediculous that someone's only love language is "receiving gifts " it means that you can get in such a toxic relationship and it's okey just because they buy you gifts ... , the thing is yes maybe it MIGHT work with some people but it's not something to get obssedwith , another really toxic thing about is restricting your whole life over one thing and one category so taking these "life styles rules for a better life " too seriously would make you put your own brain in some sort off "prison" where you only "identify "as one thing and u can't be diffrentthings at the same time , great video by the way alice
"A very annoying trend that tends to depoliticize social problems/social realities into psychological problems" YES!!! This is an INCREDIBLY astute observation. It is everywhere! A book that began to talk about this decades ago is "The Triumph of the Therapeutic" by Philip Rieff, but we don't talk about this enough. I hope you keep writing and talking about it @AliceCappelle
Another great video. As a psychologist, I feel like it's really necessary to debunk all these concepts that are rooted in conservatism. Love languages, body language, psychoanalysis or other sketchy personality types only makes everyone more insecure (especially women as you explained in your video) about having normal, genuine human interactions.
Sometimes this channel feels like "Alice Ruins Everything" - but not this time, not for me! I just read "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow, and the end of the book discusses how patriarchal society overlays relationships of care with relationships of violence and domination. (Even the word "domination" has the same root as the word "domestic!") It's really interesting to see the 5 love languages in that context. I had a partner who was into the five love languages and sometimes pressured me to tell them what my love language was... I was never sure why that bothered me, but this explains it well!
I never read the book or took the test, but I think that my mom and I would probably have different results because she likes the verbal affirmation and praise and words of love and hugs most, but I think I would have more of the other options like food gifts and acts of service, I am more likely to feel like I am showing love by making and giving her food but I know that she is not going to perceive that unless I also use my words and she knows that giving me special food spending time with me and helping me with things I find difficult will mean more to me than just words, I don’t know if that’s what the book was about but that is how I experience my relationship with my mom, and we both have more than one of those categories as primary ways we express ourselves so it is definitely not one or the other but a combination of several different love languages that seem to be closest to how I experience the world.
I think the cool thing about the legacy of the love languages in pop culture, as interpreted by people who've never read the book, is the way that it ended up as a language for relationship roles, desires, and differences that's orthogonal to gender. I think that's why it's so appealing to a lot of queer folks--if you already have a queer relationship with categories and a tendency to view lists of 5 things as examples of a spectrum, it's pretty easy to apply the idea of love languages basically wherever you want and especially in places where straight people won't stop talking about brain sex or whatever. I think it's still important to add in the stuff you're saying about treating needs you have in a given situation as static personality traits (hell, you could say the same thing about "gay", "straight", and "bi" themselves), but the queer and often memetic reinterpretations are the much more interesting version of the idea, I think.
SO to your nominally feminist point about how it's always women who think the love languages are transformative: I'm amab, but trans-nb/femme (so i can't say if my experience confirms or denies your claim ;), and the concepts in the book *absolutely* helped me understand my relationship dynamic with my partner, our kids, and also between my partner and our kids. My partner primarily feels love through acts of service, and frequently asks for service from all of us (for things they are perfectly able to do) as their coded "do you love me?" query. They also *show* love that way, by always things for other people - even if they are neither requested or desired - and can't understand why their service might not be appreciated. That said, I do agree that the way some people use the text can be reductive, but I think that speaks more to the failures of those people, rather than to the ideas in the text.
i love the podcast episode if books could kill about the 5 love languages. it really dives into how chapman's goal is to keep couples from divorcing, even to the point where, in the first edition, he told a woman who was likely being sexually abused that her husband's love language is touch, and to initiate intimacy with him. to me, the general theme of the book, and therefore of the concept, is that you, the female partner, need to change your behavior for the man in your life to be more appreciative. compliment him, be nice and forgiving towards him, and forget that a partnership not under patriarchy requires an equal division of all labor, including invisible labor
@3:50 of course putting the garbage out is a normal thing to do, and it's not suggested in the book that it's unusual for Dan to do it. The idea is that she compliments him on the totally normal things he does all the time, and that makes him think 'oh i like getting complimented, i'm going to do something extra like painting the bedroom, then i'll get a really big compliment'
My parents applied this technique to my two siblings and me in the 1980s already, based on a parenting course. Within no time we were not doing more things, but we were complimenting their compliments: "that's so great that you are complimenting me for this, you should do that more often".
That was really funny. Last week at my college, we were discussing Structuralism and how it impacted cinema. It's a way I see in general subjects today, that we have to categorize everything? Like, everything should be research as science? and because of that, we abandon our own instincts and don't trust them sometimes
Thanks a lot for your video. I deeply agree: queer approaches from the beginning try to defy categories ; from this point of view, any rigid typology of relations should be scrutinized and challenged.
my love language is likes, comments and subscriptions :)
Here you go❤
Here's some love 😌
("If you aren't fluent in them already... 😒")
and quite obviously, humor. 😀
Great channel.
🫡
Reject the five love languages, embrace the five romance lamguages: Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese and Romanian
Don’t forget the Bromance languages
boo europe 👎👎
Catalan would like a word...
Why do they all originate from such a limited part of the world?
@@PauLtus_B
The word "romance" here doesn't mean "romantic," it means "coming from Rome," the reason they all come from part of Europe is precisely the reason they're called that, because they developed from Latin, the language spoken in Ancient Rome.
Rome --> Romance
a few weeks ago i was venting to a friend abt my partner not contributing to the housework, & I went “like, is my love language really acts of service, or do I just need my partner to do the dishes.”
this video is everything i’ve been trying to put in words for a while now, so thanks ❤
People are different. People have different needs and expectations. Some people need to feel valued in a relationship. They need to feel like they actually matter and are not just being used. Maybe you or others don't have the same need.
The example used in the video, for example. I wonder why it is the wife was sitting there ordering the husband around to do various chores. Tasking him like some kind of child. How come she wasn't helping or pitching in? It's pretty easy to be resentful of someone or feel unmotivated to help when they simply dictate to you like some kind of peon. And sometimes the barest encouragement is all someone needs. A reminder that they actually matter as a human being.
Why would you bend over backwards doing everything for your partner when she doesn't lift a finger to help and orders you around without even basic respect?
> “like, is my love language really acts of service, or do I just need my partner to do the dishes.”
When your partner does the dishes, what do you feel? Relief at a task being crossed off the list and appreciation of what the task has accomplished? Or butterflies in your stomach based on a _proof_ that your partner loves you, as in "aw that's so _sweet_ of you"?
My partner makes coffee most mornings, and I think it's the sweetest thing. But if they stopped or had never done that, I wouldn't think or feel they loved me any less. [Maybe unless they stop doing it out of spite, but maybe the spite is a temporary mood thing.] This persuades me that this particular act of service is not part of my primary love language.
Maybe a relevant difference between dishes and morning coffee is the difference between _our_ needs and _my_ needs: acts of service only triggers the love language warm fuzzies if it's purely about the needs and preferences of the recipients, i.e. if the act is a gift rather than a trade or collaboration.
I hope someone finds this useful.
@@LC-wv7tz While I do see your point and agree that the example could have been elaborated slightly to avoid confusion, it is implied that the wife is the one doing basically all the chores apart from taking out the garbage (which for some reason commonly is labeled a male chore, similar to mowing the lawn).
What’s your partner’s love language?
@@persikosaft I don't think that's implied at all... it doesn't really imply anything one way or another. Who labels anything a "male" chore? Or a "female" chore? That's not a thing. never heard of in my life.
My wife and I had to read this book as a part of marriage prep to get married at our Catholic church (we're like, medium-low religious, married five years).
We both thought the book had some okay points. But we also don't have an issue with communication. I think the book's main target are people who have trouble communicating with their partner. It narrows the field down A LOT, and gives each person a couple of things to focus on to encourage communication. I think that's... fine.
The real issue I have with the book is the antiquated (patriarchal) way it's written. I'd have to dig up our copy we both annotated for specific examples. But I remember most, if not all of the author's examples placing the woman in the position of the fixer or the problem. I remember practically yelling at the book by the end. It's very frustrating, because it encourages so much of the infantilization of men in a relationship that contributed to these issues in the first place.
Another example of this I found was in a potty training book we read. It's written by a woman, clearly towards women. A huge portion of it is dedicated to getting your partner (husband) to help you potty train your kid. It was depressing to read. But this is part of the problem, right? People aren't communicating, so they need the most basic help to not go crazy.
This. I can def appreciate how much people I know need to be taught the basic. 😂
This: As someone asked to refer people for marriage counseling a lot, my first question is if they can do the homework I prescribe them for the next 4 weeks: talk face to face 30 minutes every day (no distractions) and each person gets 15 minutes to talk with the only things the other person saying is repeating back what they thought they heard to ensure accuracy.
Almost everyone who CAN do the homework either 1) No longer needs therapy or 2) get a lot out of therapy
Everyone else….seems to fail marital therapy.
Communication and mutual understanding / care are soooo important.
that's a good point which really puts light on the underlying issue that is communication
You had me...till you used the word 'patriarchy'.
When I read the book there was no solution to getting out of a bad relationship from a females perspective... happy for the woman who submitted and didn't have something bad happen but not all woman have it work trying these 5 techniques just saying it's not a magic pill and from a biblical standpoint abuse is immoral if it's at that point and then if u done this already to no avail go back to real thing and not the counterfeit unconditional love is patient and kind.... is the part where woman carry the weight of love on their shoulders like the author suggests really whats dentrramental here? ...rhetorical
My psychologist said: don't read the book, just understand the theory. And I think that is great advice as we've established that the book is very old fashioned and indeed focussing on women to create the solution to every problem. Also, the theory can give partners tools to talk about their needs and wants and desires, so I think it could be helpful as a vehicle to better communicate with each other.
@sackhaarspalterif this is how the women in your life are treating you, they may be toxic.
@_zantetsuken_they wouldn't be alone if they actually did something about being alone. Second, women don't want a man child anymore, period.
I guess I've never thought of the 5 love languages as being so rigid. I always figured that, just as a person changes via time and circumstance, that they might have a somewhat dominant love language, but not immutable. I thought of it like communication suggestions, not commandments. Like... everything in moderation.
Same. Did you also learn about it by being told about it by a friend or relative, rather than even realizing it was from some rigidly confining book?
I've found them very useful in talking about what we were hoping for more of from the other with my partner, but they're just ways of communicating about broadly related care/affection patterns.
I actually read the book and Chapman even states that it is not a rigid system and the languages have all sorts of dialects and we all have some kind of mix going in for us.
Yes, it is an interesting suggestion, not to be set in stone.
@@Rolepgeek I didn't know about the book until after I'd heard someone mention it, and I still haven't read the book. The 5 Love Languages stood out to me because it felt like (if you use it in a flexible way) an actually somewhat useful communication framework. And what I mean by flexible is that it's not used to define someone else or oneself, but rather to offer suggestions for alternate avenues of communication to help people solve conflicts and reach mutual understandings.
But then, I tend to be a person who is perfectly willing to give someone an appreciative 'thank you' even for doing basic chores because no one wants to do that shit, we do it because we have to, and it can be nice to acknowledge it.
Agreed. All language and concepts are limiting to some degree or another. They're still useful as a heuristic. I think its more about how one holds it or relates to categorizations psychologically. Do we relate to them loosely or rigidly?
When I take the garbage out, my wife thanks me, and when she takes it out, I thank her. Yes, taking the garbage out is a normal adult thing to do. It's also boring and unpleasant, so when either of us does it, the other one gives thanks. We do so for many little things, and I think our relationship is much better for it. I'd hate for my chores and contribution to the household to be taken for granted, and the same goes for my wife.
If you only criticize your partner for the things they’re not doing and not showing appreciation, you’ll come off as a nag. Positive reinforcement of behaviors you want to see repeated is a very basic thing. It encourages the person to do the thing to see you happy rather than just go avoid your anger. You’re not making yourself appealing to live with if people are thinking of themselves as avoiding your inevitable nagging. And the dynamics of living alone & doing chores ultimately for yourself is completely different from living with other people & keeping a shared space clean, wherein there are multiple people generating trash with different attitudes about what constitutes cleanliness
To me, it's one of the least unpleasant chores unless I remember to do it after dark in winter the night before bin day as I have to go down two flights of stairs and into the communal garden to place it in communal bins. Normally, I do it on my way out somewhere to kill two birds with one stone. Making phone calls, though, is something I dread.
I agree but that's not her point. What she is saying is that the woman shouldn't have to encourage her partner to help, he should realise for himself that it is needed. The fact that she needs to behave this way stems from the fact that the burden of the chores is by default hers, not 50/50.
Yeah it kind of makes me think of those gratitude journal exercises people do, it's just nice to express thanks and appreciation throughout the day. It's just a shame that this sort of thing can be really one-sided in some relationships
@@robertamoriano6447 would she make the same argument to women in relationships where the man works hard outside the house and brings in the majority of the income? Or would she tow the liberal line of denigrating hetrosexual traditional men working and sacrificing to provide and protect for their families?
My love language is radical speech about revolution.
yes
Think that falls under Words of Affirmation (TM) 😊
@@nickthepeasantmanifesting true abundance!😅
Hell yea
i prefer radical action
You should talk about MBTI next
Please ….. !!! It’s needed! 😅
PLEASE!!
yes please!!!
No piece of practical psychology is ever going to be scientifically valid, and that's what makes it popular. As long as people don't take it too seriously, everything is fine... the key is that everyone is able to act like any other personality and appreciate love coming in any way, but everyone has preferences, which explains why your best friend might be a boring or horrible person to others. Personally I find both of these theories fun to think about sometimes, and maybe even a bit useful, as long as you keep in mind that it's about preference and not about putting people into boxes.
If you care for someone you will take the effort to understand what they like most and try to give it to them when possible, but putting them in a box, and saying for example that the world is divided into those who like chocolate and those who like chips is limiting at best and offensive at worst.
omg YES PLS. even supposed "cognitive function/jungian" mbti, though i guess more fleshed out than the myers-briggs theory, is also inherently flawed and still as pseudoscientifical in and of itself and i would like to hear more discussions about it (and also just how gatekeepy some people can be about mbti/mbti knowledge?? 💀💀)
Good to hear a critical perspective... I learned about the 5 LL in marriage preparation before my marriage to my wife. There are of course some useful things that unfortunately need to be learned for most men regarding not just doing something for a reward. That can really feel like keeping score which is also not healthy. I guess basically there's a lot of unlearning required it seems in current patriarchal societies.
LOL. how did you tie the unfortunate need for men to relearn and the patriarchy? HAHAHAHAHHA
@@osasosas2982 Because he’s a guy (?)
@@osasosas2982Can you expand on this question?
🤦♂Doing things because you care about a person only gets you abused (Something that comes for free is perceived as having no value/If men do it, we're seen as weak thus cut off as anyone's potential partner). Also calling our society a patriarchal society now is crazy (Assuming you are referring to countries like US, UK, Australia/Patriarchal societies are mostly Middle Eastern and African).
Even demonizing patriarchy makes no sense considering the fact that we wouldn't even be here sitting comfortably talking shit about it had it not existed.
Let me ask you something, where did people get the idea that men are oppressors? Is it from the top 1% men that control the world or the 99% that live under them (It should be neither because it all served to advance human civilization/Some men governed and the majority served). Women only became angry at the "patriarchy" because life became comfortable enough for them to be independent and thought that option was always readily available (Funny because the patriarchy made their lives peachy, yet they want to talk shit about it/Bite the hand that freed you from your societal role). We had roles back then yes, like men provide/protect and women hold down the household. You think all those men that fulfilled their duties not just to their families but to their societies enjoyed every minute of it. You think men enjoyed being forced to labor all day or fight and die for their country. Women just didn't like the fact that they had a role to fulfill. At most I would say women were only oppressed for 20-35 years, not the entirety of mankind (1945-1980/Even in the 40's-50's most jobs were still too dangerous/harsh for women). You know why the first and the third waves of feminism were useless because the first came too early and only applied to the rich women of society who were able to live on their own (too early for the common woman/not many voted for change and not because they were suppressed but because they were focused on their roles) and the third had nothing else to fight about, if anything it was more of a fight for supremacy.
I'm tired of this dumbass shit being common. All it takes is looking at the other side (men's) to understand that we did what we were supposed to, not because we liked it but because we had to. You never saw us creating a men's movement to start bitching about it (Ik there is one but its fair seeing how systemically we're being fucked over and oh so subtly/Still don't agree with it). Imagine if all men just said nope to fighting wars or being drafted during WW2, we would be living Nazi America now. Bitching got us nowhere.
@@aquaaria3489 What he means is that if society was patriarchal why would we need to relearn anything? Because it's not.
That quiz has you answer about 100 questions and then tells you you have to pay to unlock the results.
"Taking out the trash" can be a massive achievement, especially for us ND folks who struggle to function and having that be appreciated is nice, too.
But it's not the point of what she is saying, the point is that anyone would be happy to be appreciated regardless of ND status, most people don't like to do chores, and ND people just have a harder time with doing them, most ND traits are normal things most peiple go through taken to the extreme.
Yes but when anyone is in a relationship, including us ND folk, we're making a commitment. Your partner is your equal. They are not your boss and they are not your carer. Yes you should be able to depend on them but they should also be able to depend on you.
In general i agree that the 5 love languages are limiting and unideal... However, i 100% thank my partner for the little things they do around the house and they thank me. Obvs we should all be working together. The thanking is not a reward. Its an acknowledgement of the work each other are doing.
I sometimes get stressed out and feel like im doing everything. If i think back though, and can list all the other things my partner did bc i acknowledged them every time, then i am often able to realize "oh im just burnt out right now, i need more help than usual" and then i can ask for that.
Additionally, at least in the culture i grew up in, thanking is just polite. If my partner is handing me my dinner plate and i say "thank you", that is not a reward im giving them for doing something theyre supposed to do in our partnership anyway. I am being polite, bc when people give us food or do nice things for us in my culture we just say thank you afterwards. Maybe other people prefer different dynamics in their relationships, but I have seen parents and grandparents forgo these little things and focus on expectation, and then yell dismiss and become irritated with each other. For me and my partner its respect all the way down
I have spent years asking friends and situationships about their 5 love languages believeing it was a tool that would dramatically help our communication. It wasn't until a couple of months ago that a lgbtq friend sent me a book that expanded on this concept, and proposed more than a dozen languages more (Anne Hodder-Shipp's "Speaking from the heart"). I love how Alice described it at 09:45, thinking about love as a creative process that produces new subjectivity/ies. Recently I have been making a concious effort of "mixing" all these languages moment to moment, and listening to other people and their preferences taking into account their social, "cognitive" (because they could be neurodivergent people) and political context.
Great essay, thank you Alice! :)
Thanks for the book rec! Looks like a good read and a great way to build on the concept, which was probably well intended, but seems fundamentally reductive and problematic
Everybody, man, woman, roomate, should be given a "thank you for doing that" when doing chores. I have experimented on it with great results. About the 5 love languages, you should not approach it like a complete explanation of how every relationship works. It is more of a framework for putting words on what ech partner need.
I think that there was some good intentions there originally. But you are right--trying to break something as complex as human relationships into simple boxes is going to make for overly simplistic categories. Always thought-provoking! Have a great week, Alice!
I've met too many people who used to take this Five Love Languages thing as some sort of holy truth and this was enough to keep me at safe distance from that.
My ex almost broke up with me when I told her I didn't believe in the concept of love languages, she said "How are you going to know how to express love then?"
I feel like if people took anything as "holy truth" so much that they think of it as absolute and pretty much stop discussion, growth, and understanding, it's a sign of more work needed.
I personally quite appreciate FLL, but never seriously think of it as a must. It's helpful, as with many things in life.
@@MagisterialVoyager It’s definitely helpful because it kind of helped me being aware of what people can do to express their love and what boundaries you can set if they display any love language in a toxic way.
@@aquaaria3489 Yep! It has been quite helpful to me as well! :) Especially with dating, since we're often learning about someone from the ground up.
@@aquaaria3489that's fine, it's just not a universal truth, I don't particularly fluctuate to any of the 5 languages, I do all of them depending on the person and context, and I don't prefer any of them, nor does any of them come naturally to me, so I think we should all take it with a grain of salt and shouldn't dismiss people when it doesn't fit or work for them.
how is thanking someone going above and beyond?
The five love language is a great conversation starter in what people think they need and what they think their partner needs. Is a way to simplify stuffs. Anyone who takes it like a unchanging box is wrong.
First off all you make some really great points. The only nit I have is your assumption that the problem with the lady and her trash taking out husband was just due to the patriarchy. Having been married over 20 years, I have found the following to be true: 1. both members of the couple feel like they are working hard to make the relationship succeed and the household successful. 2. we all appreciate being appreciated for this work.3. It is far too easy to see the all the things you are doing and see what is left undone as a failure of the other party to pull their weight. That last one is kind of a big one. There will always be things left undone, and it is best when a couple can find those things and find a way to get them done together or outsource them (like your "joke" about hiring a manager).
You are right in all your points, I just think you're not coming from the same perspective as her, hers is a more of a general perspective based on society issues, women are disproportionately responsible for house work in most of the statistics you find.
I'm in Latin America, most men I know don't cook, don't clean, don't take care of their own children, don't wash their own clothes, it's either mother or wife who does all of this, they just work and that's the bulk of their responsibility, while the woman works and do all the rest and every time a man is different from this standard, a father who actually spends time and take care of the basic necessities of his children, they are praised like they are going above and beyond, so I think this is the implied part of her point.
But there are compelling reasons
To think it is patriarchy. Ask that husband what their values are about how a man and woman should act in a relationship and all is clear. Yes both couples will FEEL like they are working hard. But if one of those people has an inherently unequal viewpoint, from decades of subliminal messaging. It can make you wonder whom really is doing the work. It was very sobering for me to realize how many patriarchal behaviors I took part in, until I read about the psychology. And I'm in no means the worst example of it, and I've only been alive as long as you've been married.
Yeah I agree with you! I think her points about the patriarchy are 100% valid, AND if we don't celebrate the small things then life becomes such a slog
I was down to make fun of the pseudoscience of love language, but I kind of had to roll my eyes at her inability to understand the concept of positive reinforcement, which was why the compliment thing was a logical way for the wife to get her husband to do more chores
I wouldn't dismiss this entirely. Yes, it can be rigid if you stick to it to a T, but there is also some good advice and guidance for better communication and understanding other people's behaviour. I would get really mad at people for not wanting to spend time with me and annoyed at compliments, but I also needed to understand that people have different ways of showing appreciation and I just need to communicate my needs better.
Me and my boyfriend talked about the love languages when we started dating. We thought our love language was quality time, but we really just use all of them all the time. It works for us.
Thank you Alice for always articulating what some of us struggle to verbalize! I think that the way the 5 love languages are limiting also extends to the common belief that saying "I love you" to your partner/parent/sibling/friend should only be done during "special" instances. As if there's a shortage of how we are supposed to express love! That's not supposed to be like that, love is abundant and we should freely express it as much as we can. It made me think of how much people equate love as something like a ration. Love shouldn't be scarce it is expansive!
Insightful essay as always, thank you Alice for this :))
My ex was very fond of this book and philosophy, and convinced me to take it seriously with her. Only eventually I discovered that she wasn't concerned about how I figured into the dynamic, she just wanted me to be ever cognizant of her in every way, and soon I had no time to show myself any attention.
Same 😩
Personally love languages help me with communicating with my closest friends. My love language is to serve and take care of my friends, "fix" problems for them etc. I don't like touching or being touched and I'm uncomfortable with praise, and so I also don't give verbal affirmations. Understanding that one of my best friends likes gifts and really needs verbal affirmation and also likes cuddles has helped us to discuss our boundaries. Before I got frustrated when they ignored all the service I did for them, as they took it for granted, but now they've learned to appreciate it more and also when I'm not in the mood they make food for us both or something they know makes me feel appreciated. And I try to remind them verbally of how much I love and appreciate them, even though it feels weird to me as I wouldn't like that myself. And as I don't like cuddling, but I know they do, so when they're in real need, upset, then if I'm in an okay head space I will sooth them with physical touch. It's about compromises and finding out how to best match your mismatched needs.
So whilst sure for some people these will have been affected by the cultural gender based binary norms they grew up in, personality is also in affect, so this video felt a bit too over simplified which is ironic as any personality typings are simplifications. But that's why they're good starting points for self reflection and communication. And for most people if I say my love language is serving others they get it better than if I tell them I have a Virgo stellium in my birth chart, but essentially they are the same thing.
Totally agree! Most people I encounter don't have a very good grasp on their relationship needs and tend to get in endless fights. To abstract and simplify their needs and problems in a model like that has been life saving. Most of the people can't tell you why this is upsetting for them. They just expect you to do and think exactly as they think. So it's been very transformative to "show" that people expect different things. And this is mostly women with women, so this has no patriarchal context tbh.
She makes a lot of statements in this video which she never proves. Why is it bad to simplify something? Ever heard of models? Those are meant to show the world in a simplified way to be more understandable and give a tool to work with. Why is it bad to save a relationship?
I'd also say that the example she showed with the trash is more of a problem because it's basically manipulation and they're not openly communicating with each other. The five love languages are not the primary problem, if it at all. If we had emotional education in school I'd agree we should expect more than this model. But so far even this is for most people a barely to understand concept. I think it doesn't deserve the critic made here.
I agree with what both of you wrote. Just some petty remarks about the horoscope and these theories: they are not the same thing at all.
1) the horoscope is set at birth and never changes, while personality and love languages do
2) personality theories and practical psychology describe reality, while the horoscope is saying that the stars influence you. There is reasons why the horoscope works to a certain extent. For example if I am born in January I'll probably be older than most people in my cohort, which will affect my development in similar ways to all other people who were born in January, and make us similar in certain ways. Believing that the stars have anything to do with this is a religion. It is both funny and sad to see people ridiculing religions and believing the horoscope because these days, that's the more trendy alternative
@@AsdrubaleRossi 1) the planets move around making different aspects to each other all the time and changing signs while doing that. Your birth chart is fixed, but whilst you might have had your sun in aries and your mercury in scorpio when you were born, they won't be in the same placements for most of your life. The sun once a year during your birth month every year sure, but for all the planets it takes different times for them to move around the sun, and we on earth don't stay put either. This is also why the outer planets are sometimes called "generational" planets as they move slower so there's gonna be generations with the same placements of, for example Saturn, which is about boundaries and authority, and you can really see those kind of shifts easily if you just look at history and peoples attitudes changing around those themes. Personal planets (the closer ones) don't affect the collective in that way, but more on the personal day to day level, although the Barbie-movie phenomena happened now during the venus retrograde which is still on going, but whilst it is a global phenomena, the effects have been in personal relationships (people breakign up because of the film, yeah it's wild). I've only dipped my toe in this stuff, but whilst saying ones birth chart (or "horoscope") is fixed is true, it's a constantly shifting system with a lot of variables and if someone thinks all they need is their sun sign, it just means they don't know jack about astrology.
Astrology is just one system (a really, really old one) to help better understand personality, preferences, habits, comfort zones, gifts and even daily sifts in mood. The same as any simplified personality typings.
2) Psychology is a pseudo science and personality theories are no more real than Freuds penis envy theory. Jungian ideas about the shadow self whilst a lot more credible, still no more scientific as they cannot be proven. Psychology is a guessing game as it's flawed people who don't even understand themselves trying to help other flawed people to understand themselves. You can't prove the mind excists, so scientifically speaking psychology is a pseudo science. It doesn't make it wrong, but it doesn't make it true either.
Who's ridiculing religion here? Sounds to me your bias is showing. Personally, I do see merit in psychology as I'm not a science-believer (meaning a person who doesn't understand the scientific method) and I'm hopeful one day we can explain and prove in a satisfactory way the theories and things observed via psychology, hell, we may even prove the effect the movements of the planets have on us one day ;) I jest, but truly, I personally do not mind not knowing or fully understanding why the moon pulls the tides, but I know it has been proven by some folk fiercly smarted than myself and have chosen to trust that, so in a sense, I don't know the moon affects the tides, I _believe_ it does because I've been told that with evidence that I personally deem enough. And I don't see a reason why the moon wouldn't affect us too as we're mostly water. I feel the effects (always have, even before I knew what it was), and astrology has explained some personality quircks a lot better and with more nuance than any love language or other personality theories I've come across, so I don't mind if it's a miraculous coincidence or the actual effect of massive space orbs and gas giants moving about 🤷 Astrology is as much about legends, stories and archetypes as any personality theories, just with more math involved. I would classify it as a branch of philosophy more than religion, but to each their own. As that is the point of astrology; we're all unique and should learn to know and understand ourselves so we can live more harmonously with each other. Something it has in common with psychology.
When someone says they don't like one of the love languages I view it as some kind of unhealed trauma. Not accepting love in any form is just suspect to me. And I think it enables people not to work on themselves bc they found a new pseudo science method of intellectualizing
@@tZork7 you can't work on yourself before first acknowledging there is an issue to be worked on. Someone with unhealed and concealed (subconcious or conciously avoidant) trauma would not be able to recognise their preferences in love languages because you need to self reflect and do the work in order to do that.
And childhood trauma does affect us in such deep ways that even if you work through them, the preferences may still be there for the rest of your life (not to mention cultural preferences). I know that partly I don't like or trust verbal praise is due to a narcissitic father who only criticiced so if anyone complimented something I did it made me mildly anxious and my kneejerk reaction is to deflect to another topic, downplay my achievement or just not belive them. Because I was taught so early on that I'm always wrong and nothing I do is ever good enough, but even if it is there's no pat on the back, just the relief of not being yelled at. From close friends when we're alone I can take praise and listen to what they like about what I've done, and not just wait for the critism, probably because I can trust when they praise me one-on-one that it's genuine, whilst pupblicly praising can just be for show. That's trauma, but it's hard to say where I begin and my trauma ends, you know? And I don't consider it unhealed, I'm very aware of it and I've spent many years working on it, there's no emotional reaction anymore, but that doesn't mean that my personal preferences that were affected by said trauma will ever change. Early trauma is pretty hard to separate from, as that is what shaped you into who you are today, and the important thing is to not let it stop you from living your best life. I don't need verbal confirmation about my skills, and I don't need to learn to like it in order to live a full and happy life. I also come from a culture that is very modest and sees boastful people as crude and frankly embarrasing, so that too plays a part in why publicly given praise feels uncomfortable to me. So it's not all trauma based preference but also cultural.
Frankly, saying that everyone should accept all forms of love given/offered sounds creepy af. But maybe that's because I'm asexual and people tend to not believe we excist just because they cannot imagine not being turned on by other people. I'm simply uninterested. If you're not interested, you're not missing out. I have no FOMO about cuddles or verbal praise or gifts, because I don't want them. Trying to force me into wanting or liking something I do not would be abusive, reminds me of all the "pray the gay away" stuff. Not everyone needs or wants the same things, and we're all so unique it's silly to think that there's any "normal" set of preferences (especially something made up like the five love languages) that would apply to everyone.
The video came out of left field for me but was very interesting as I grew up in a religious context, and love is the core theme of Christianity for a lot of things and just as many misunderstandings regarding it. Thanks for the kickoff to some thinking.
I happen to have read the book as well. They were very clear that there aren't only five and these were just broad classifications. They also mentioned that what you enjoy may change in as your life changes. I think the book has been 'horoscoped' but the whole point was to teach people that what their partner needs to feel loved may be different from what they need, and they should look into those expressions to help them love eachother better.
Totally agree on this take!
Telling your husband how mich you appreciate his taking out the garbage is not so mich about words of affirmation in my opinion, but rather about something like weaponised incompetence or getting a huge compensation for something that may feel effaminating.
Love is like art. There is no right way to do it, but there are certainly wrong ways to do it.
I took my long-term love to take this test in person when we were in college, and he dismissed it. I want ALL of it, he said. That's part of what I love about him. ❤
I think the 5 Love languages can be a very useful tool, one which should be the starting point of relationship discussions, rather than the end.
I think there is value in categorizing the ways we show affection because it allows to be more deliberate in how we choose to show love in a way that is most appreciated by the other person. BUT typecasting yourself as having only one or one main love language despite the context is the equivalent of astrology for women or men calling themselves sigma males.
This video opened a whole new dimension of thinking in my head. Why are we so obsessed with categorising ourselves? This is such a great topic.
I’ve noticed the love languages don’t hold true for neurodivergent people (like me) because we express and experience love in unconventional ways, like penguin pebbling or info-dumping. In my dating experience, people who relied on the five love languages had trouble understanding or even picking up on me showing them affection, and they got frustrated because I didn’t behave or feel how I was “supposed to” in a relationship. It was a strange position to be in, and enough to put me off the five love languages for a while.
Yes! Was looking to see if someone mentioned this! I think it can be harmful to act as if these "love languages" are factual because it does not take into consideration how different brains process and show love. Penguin pebbling, info dumping, and parallel play are all ways that I show my love to others. Having terms to describe how we show love is a good idea, but trying to fit human behavior into specific boxes is always going to be a bad idea. Especially when some people only consider NTs when talking about human behavior.
As a suspected (by my psychologist) neurodivergent person whose main love language is bad jokes, jumpscaring people, insulting them with dumb insults and kicking them in the butt randomly, alongside surprise hugs, info-dumping, oversharing and checking how they are feeling, I agree. I also ask a lot of questions as a way to show my interest, and like to give people gifts, but only because I notice they generally make them happy (not everybody is ready for my random ways of showing affection, and not everybody is okay with physical touch or take my very dumb insults as the jokes they are, expecially because I noticed I tend to befriend other ND people and they also have their own unique ways of showing and perceiving love, and maybe they don't understand my sarcasm, expecially in the beginning).
@@TinyGhosty Exactly! I love having words for what I’m feeling and experiencing, but people are so diverse and creative and I think it’s sad to limit the ways people “should be” expressing love and affection
“Love Languages” in general are just dumb pop psychology. People are complex and show/receive/acknowledge affection in all kinds of complicated ways & these love language categories are just making people pathologize stuff like “I enjoy it when my romantic partner touches/spends time with me/says nice things to etc”
Thank you for sharing your experience!
I've had similar thoughts about this since realizing that all the women living in heterosexual relationships that I've talked to about this has acts of services as their love language... None of the men and queer women on the other hand had that particular love language. This is obviously highly anecdotal, but it does make you wonder.
Het men always have “touch” which means…well not hugging. This book is used to sexually coerce wives.
Very convenient how love languages change depending on who the person is
I remember when this book was experiencing new popularity in the early-mid 2000s, and at the time, I read it and thought it seemed fine. I think I took away from it the principle that you and your partner should communicate in constructive ways with each other and be specific about your needs and wants, which is what my spouse and I tend to do. Being aware of what feels especially loving to you and to your partner can also be useful. My spouse and I both appreciate gifts when we're given them, but our personal preferences are to select our own gifts at holidays and birthdays rather than surprise each other, for example, so "gift-giving" isn't as much of a priority for either of us as it might be for other people, and this is something we're both aware of with each other. But that doesn't mean that gifts can't feel thoughtful and loving, just that they're not a go-to for us.
But looking at the book now, it seems to encourage playing games with your partner more than I noticed at age eighteen or nineteen. The "give your husband a compliment every time he does something helpful" seems a lot like housetraining a dog rather than navigating an equitable relationship. Why should you have to manipulate your partner with compliments just to get them to take out the garbage? That seems patently absurd.
I think the point is that being "over suspicious" of each other's attitude/acts, assuming that it is a manipulation strategy, it isn't beneficial for a relationship either (of any kind, it could be work, friendship, etc.)
If I tell my partner that I need words of appreciation, should I then assume that every time she says it to me, she may be "trying to get" something else? it´s just control? can't that be an honest display of affection and empathy for the needs of another?
Of course any test is necessarily an oversimplification of what it's to be a person, but there are general issues that, more or less, everyone needs (the classic complaints/scolding between couples are language issues (You never say sweets things to me ) or physical (I would like more/less displays of affection)
I dislike it intensely. If your love language is gift giving, it's annoying or frustrating to someone who lives in cramped accommodation, has too much stuff, or is moving house soon.
Funny that I hear “love languages” used as a legitimate term amongst fellow leftists often, and it suddenly makes sense as something a conservative baptist would promote through such a heteronormative traditionalist agenda, really appreciate the illuminating content you make! 💫
I do find systems of interests, personality, etc useful in having a manageable number of options and ideas to move forward in a particular instance.
Labels - over-identification-with, used prejudicially, seen as static, etc - there are many ways to misuse a tool.
That being said, I noticed the love languages seemed to be used against me in the past more so than other common systems. Also by the same type of people who torpedo a date after an astrology charting, or a long-term relationship after a chat with a ‘psychic’. They found many ways to blame everything but themselves for their hasty decisions. Decisions uninformed by simply using the actual love language of intentionally communicating with their partner.
Before watching too far in i'll give my thoughts on love language, then come back and add an edit when I've finished watching your view - for me love language stuff has always been somewhere between more helpful than astrology and less helpful than Attachment Theory. I think it's a useful tool to explain what you value in a friendship or relationship because they can always look SO DIFFERENT. I mean as an extreme example, there are married couples who live full time in different countries and barely meet up, but they talk every day and remain in love - they might say their love language is quality time or words of affirmation or gift/service etc, and not be so fussed about something like physical touch. It's a good way to assess yourself in simpler terms and anticipate problems rather than letting them explode - personally I've found it helpful as an autistic person with PTSD, because I find emotions hard to identify - I have discovered that I show love primarily through acts of service (for me this presents as wanting to take care of the other person, make them tea and offer food, helping them solve problems, buy them helpful gifts or experiences) and when receiving love I really need quality time, even if that's just texting. The longer I spend away from someone the more any emotion I had becomes detached and hard to grapple with, plus knowing the other party wants to spend time with me and will make an effort to do so (like I'm not always having to be the one planning or asking) is very calming for me and I feel appreciated 🤷 both in friendships and romantic partnerships mind you. where the problem arrives is when people 'diagnose' their behaviour and never interrogate it, never ask why they behave this way and if it might be better to adapt.
The points you bring up are interesting and thought-provoking. Having some common perception of how we generally express and receive love, however, is not necessarily wrong. They don’t have to be perceived as boxes that limit us, but rather a baseline which help us explore ourselves and our partner.
The 5 love languages is basically just a buzzfeed quiz.
It never surprised me that a Baptist pastor came up with such a reductive, simplistic panacea for the complexities of human relationships. To them, there's no nuance in life, there are no labyrinthine twists and turns in the human condition, and everything we want can be distilled down to a few fundamental needs that require feeding...but mind you, he says, pulling out his love language chart, it must be the right kind of feeding.
Are you trying to be ironic or are you just a hypocrite. How can you make such simplistic and reductive claims about an entire diverse and varied group of people? Do you not realize in life there is nuance?
Your comment, and this video tbf, is resting on the idea that the love languages and those who adopt the idea of them, are purporting this as some.sort of concrete, exact truth/science. It's not meant to be such. Like most concepts created by human thought, it's simply a framework for better making sense of something, so obviously, generalisations will be used and it may not apply to everyone equally. And that's ok.
Erich Fromm, in his Art of Loving, asserts that loving is a skill, and in that exploring oneself and the other person and improving or shifting your acting accordingly.
Some people want to explore love and all its depth with their partner. Others just want the room painted.
People are always more than the result of a single questionairre.
Jessica should get a local painter to paint her sitting room thereby contributing to the financial structure of the community
ThIs will allow her and her husband to do fun stuff together rather than trying to show their love for each other by doing jobs around the house 😂😂
I understand that the rigidness of this theory can lead to its demise, but I can’t agree with everything said here.
The reality is some people are not very physical, while others may feel most loved sharing their personal space (touch). Or some could spend all day with their partner & feel most loved, while others can love from afar (quality time).. etc.
There are so many situations where this theory can help. As humans, we change and evolve & our love languages may not stay the same, but I feel like there can be something to learn here, and gain relationship satisfaction if we are understanding & fulfilling our partners wants correctly.
I agree it shouldn’t be taken as rigidly, but I wouldn’t toss it in the bin completely… or blame it on the patriarchy.
I completely agree with you!
Great, thought-provoking video as always Alice. There is a great episode of the If Books Could Kill podcast debunking Chapman's Five Love Languages book which I would recommend to anyone interested :)
I discovered that podcast a month ago! It's my new favorite.
Yes heard that podcast too. Its just a Christian book rewritten for the secular market. It's almost as bad as Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
Just when I started believing in the love language discourse. Always grateful for the counter programming 🔥
Nice work going from the five languages to this need of categorising, and the need of an authority. For a lot of people, it feels like if something is not explained or labelled, it doesn't exist (or less). Isn't this why the whole self help book genre exists? It's what works the best on audible it seems. We are at an age when we can be anything, yet the crave of being told what we are is at its peak.
There's a parallel here to learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) which is widely embraced by educators yet is just bunk. Teachers might find it effective in practice because when using it they offer students multiple approaches to one concept, thereby enriching the students' learning. It is an inefficient and misguided way to improve learning, but if your base practice is bad then even this method can improve results. Sorta like replacing blood letting with homeopathy.
"Replacing bloodletting with homeopathy" is such a clever way to look at this pseudoscience garbage that apparently helped people because it was their first exposure to the idea that they should try to communicate
Thank you so much for this. People keep acting like 5 love languages are a fact and asking me which one I have or concluding that I have a specific one and then there is always an awkward conversation where I try to explain that it doesn't apply to me. Now I can just send them this video!
Well, finished watching the vid, so here’s my opinion.
I don’t think that love should be categorized into these definitive boxes, these rigid boundaries as to how one must experience such a complex and nuanced emotion and process such as love is. However, I do feel that for to some extent, we can use these categories to help understand ourselves, for the benefit of our relationships and self awareness. Instead of regarding these as five, distinct categories, we could observe some patterns in what kind of affection we value and want the most, and how we express affection too.
Everyone experiences love differently. Instead of boxing us off into categories of how we experience it, it would be better to identify general but not defining or rigid trends or patterns in what we want, and understand them not only on a psychological but also socio-political basis. Instead of defining the reasons for our perceived needs based on purely psychological or political reasons, we must think deeper and understand that many, complicated reasons may influence what we want/expect/are conditioned to expect from a relationship. Gender roles and other societal constructs certainly play an important role in this, and so do the more personal, psychological factors revolving around our own personality. Furthermore, our perception of what we need from love may change depending throughout our lives, both long term and short term: what kind of affection we need at the moment may vary based on what we’re feeling at that moment, what our partner in general does or does not do often, what we’ve been craving for in a while, etc. Long term changes may be influenced by age, general personal growth, experiences with previous partners, our changing environments, etc.
In conclusion, i think that for some purposes, it would be beneficial to understand how one personally experiences, values and expresses love - not by boxing it into definitive categories but looking deeper in and identifying certain major aspects, patterns or trends in certain qualities which we tend to value the most, and understanding them both in terms of socio-political lens and a psychological lens.
Like all these psychological and ‘self understanding’ trends, most notably things like MBTI, there might be some basis in fact or general, loose trends which may help us to a small extent in better understanding who we are, which are taken way too seriously by people, who end up treating it like boxed categories which define who they are completely, instead of different, varyingly sized fragments which are only a few mixed parts of the larger mosaic that is ourself, our identity, our personality.
My main issue with all of this is that on one end, having a guide that explains what you're feeling is universally a good thing. Being able to tell someone, that quality time is a love language of mine and for them to know and understand "Oh they just enjoy hanging out with me, my presence is all that's needed.". Is incredibly and undeniably nice. Learning the roots of it has been really nice, however I do believe the concepts of them have taken a completly different form in todays media landscape. It's gone from gospel to, an esoteric way to describe your wants and needs to another in a way that can be understood. People always say "Just communicate to your partner!" In some...pathological way. Without ever considering. What if they just, can't?! What if they person has issues communicating their feelings and emotions to someone else? Do we just. Doom them to a lonely life because they aren't as expressive as we might be at expressing our emotions? The idea of completly discounting a concept because it's origin is staked in a rigid belief system is...not really that great. It ignores all of the good that those simple concepts brings in favor of painting it as ultimately reductive. I've had a lot of partners that honestly, just straight up. Sucked at communicating, they weren't good at it and could never communicate what they feel for the life of them. Those were some really rough relationships. But even then, I knew their love languages and through that I was able to communicate and connect with them in meaningful ways which helped improve the health of the relationship itself. Without even reading any books, just with the surface level knowledge of love languages it helped tremendously.
People who are bad at communicating should be given the tools to improve, communication is a skill and every skill requires practice, that's why I think therapy should be easier to get, they should no be doomed to be lonely but not being able to communicate effectly does kind of already do that, you can be in a relationship and be lonelier than if you weren't.
Also, I don't think is always easy to pinpoint other people love language, because I don't think it's an universal thing, and also even if you do it can be icky, if you're managing your partner out of their shortcomings with what you perceive as their love language and ca be incredibly tiring for you and at the worst case scenario outright manipulate and abusive.
@@bluester7177 What I'm saying is that we shouldn't patronize the options people do have for expressive their emotions. Even if its something as arbitrary as Love languages. Anything that makes communication easier should be used, regardless of it's background or where it comes from.
I'm not trying to pinpoint anyone's love language or anything like that. As I said, I listen to them and what they're telling me. I don't know if you've met anyone like this but there are some people that under any emotional distress like say, a disagreement or serious discussion will just. Shut down on the spot. How does someone overcome this without expensive therapy? Obviously for a relationship with such an individual requires a lot of patience. You're right it does get tiresome, but to deny that such things have not been beneficial to myself and my relationships would be 100% incorrect.
I also do not think adhering to someone's LL's all the time is healthy either. Because you might be as the video mentions rewarding them for benign crap, and teaches people to chase validation instead of just being a decent and respectable partner.
The podcast "If Books Could Kill" does a really good breakdown of this book, and its author, too.
fascinating video! "relationships create subjectivity" keeps bouncing around in my head
My love language is talking to my wife about the video essays I listened to at work.
No but like I literally need all love languages. We all do. However, it is true that we are better at showing certain love languages more than others. My dad definitely does acts of service a lot more than the other ones. My mom likes to give gifts and words of affirmations. I like to do quality time! But we all need them to have a good relationship!
Just because you buy a TOURIST GUIDE it doesn't mean you have to visit every local attraction and/or in the order it's in the guide.
Also it is something that should be discussed within a couple and not only one side (mostly the women) trying to their it's best. I want, and feel like that my partner has the RIGHT to know (and not trying to blindly guess ) that if I'm sad, physical touch or gifts won't cheer me up. Words of affirmation will. If he tries in the "wrong" way and my mood doesn't change he will feel demotivated to try anything after a few attempts.
Please note that I have not read the book - like most of the folks, therefore on that specific topic I can't form a personal opinion.
I absolutely agree, but i still think its good to thank EACH OTHER for doing what they do, even if its just taking the garbage out, cause it makes the other person feel that their work is seen and appreciated idk. My ex used to be the one to cook pretty much every day and i would still thank him everyday when we sat down to eat, eventhough thats how we had split the tasks and it was his job to cook pretty much
I've always considered things like love languages, mbti, etc, as a tool for understanding that two people can look at the same situation and see completely different things, and that's alright. Some people learn this easily, and others need more convincing to actually internalize this.
Things like this also give us language to begin the conversation.
Also, there's a distinction that is important with these systems. Some of them talk about quality, like 3d, and some are more like a geographical map. Your love language is whatever, but it doesn't discuss the quality of your ability to speak that language.
It's interesting to remember the origin of where things came from though. There are so many ideas that are rooted in so many problematic things.
the 5 love languages is one of those preconceptions / clichés about love that are SO engrained in how we think about love that I never even thought of questioning it! you did such an interesting debunking of it, thanks for keeping me on my toes :,)
I mean, the book only came out in the early '90s: can we really describe that as ingrained?
Yep
@@talideon hm maybe not - i'm born in 2000 though, so I feel like by the time I grew up and learnt about love it was already a taken-for-granted "tool" people in my surroundings used to "understand" love!
@@talideon "can we really describe that as ingrained?" Yes we can. The love languages is not a novel innovation. It is just a formal commercialized publication of assumptions that western society has believed in all along. Its rooted in Christianity, long held gender stereotypes and justified with modern sounding psychological language. Our predisposition to believe in it is what allowed the love language concept become so popular.
I thought my love language was acts of service until I started living with a partner who does chores without being told or expecting praise.
I've never understood this hate of giving your partner praise or positive reinforcement. I'm currently living with my partner and whenever she does chores/house work I praise her and let her know how much I appreciate her and she does the same for me when I do them. Is that really such a bad thing? I don't care if she or I are doing the bare minimum, we still appreciate the effort none the less.
@@captainkidd22 They never said praise is a bad thing. The bad thing is having a shitty partner who doesn't do the chores *without* being praised. Like a child
I always did not jive that much with the five love languages but always thought that was just a personal thing so this video has been enlightening.
As a socioligist who grew up as the kid of an Evangelical pastor (in the super conservative Hungary in the 1990s), I can 100% agree with your critique of love languages. And all sorts of individualising pop psycho categories (Myers Briggs, enneagram, horoscope etc). We all have the possibility to grow beyond these and discover independent reality.
I think however, that these categories were a starting point for many couples in the church to begin to reflect on their needs and relationship -at all. I think it is important to understand Chapman's influence on church counselling as a progressive step, and imagine how the normative climate of the churches were much behind the 90s, I would say, it was like other places in the world in the beginning if the 1960s. Let me explain :)
As I grew up, my dad and I used to have long discussions about marriages - something he had similar insights about like Chapman did, as he talked to hundreds of couples during his career. The couples in the church often had many problems, that came from systemic oppression, the inadequacy of their partnering as well as individual problems they carried. The church that time was dealing with its extremely repressive legacy of a set of neoconservative teachings about marriage and gender roles. Many people had just began to realise how destructive and dehumanising these teaching were. After this, they realised, that the people who promoted them were absolutely not worthy of trust and third, they began to critique them with correct theological arguments.
But the damage was great. Whenever people talked about a marriage, it was somehow always miserable ( I wonder why...). People in church had previously never been encouraged to pursue romantic love or pleasure just for the joy of it. Everything was centred around the "service of the Lord". The "Call" was the most important factor in making decisions together. Happyness in itself was not really a thing. If someone had a loving relationship, they were truly lucky. Chapman's very simplistic teachings were one of the first glimpse of hope, because they meant, that people can pursue an affectionate relationship just for the sake of cultuvating love.
These are the steps and concepts of babies compared to the sophisticated arguments and complex thought that was going on outside the church for a long time, but it was liberating at the time. It was easy to explain to simple people who would not have been open to intellectual discussions. It was still apolitical as you pointed out, but it changed the way couples related to each other. It changed their vision about what could there be. And many people did not stop there. They discovered, that there is more to discover. That discovery is good . This was revolutionary I think. Not enough, but much better than before.
Actually I think that compared to the neoconservative repressive teachings, Gary Chapman's depoliticised, managerial approach is still political. It decentralised the power and placed the accountability on the couple, instead of the church leader. Turning right against the teachings was not possible within church, because the theology was still developing. This was a shift that allowed people to take their marriage out from the influence sphere of the church and liberate it from the service language. And to just have it for themselves for the first time. Depoliticising and politicising are both political. We are always political;) The implicit critical nature of teachings like this, unfolded in the next generation's attitudes.
Fast forward to the kids who grew up in these families: I can assure you that we are all very critical of individualising these problems. In small churches in Hungary, now we openly talk about patriarchy, neoliberalism and the pressure of conforming to the traditional gender roles, in church and in family life. We feel alienated from the political alliances of the churches and can clearly see that it is always old white guys that do not need to be accountable. We also openly talk about the terrible treatment of LGBTQ+ people had gotten from homophobic church communities, and we do not really find our place where it is prescribed. We are not alone though. Older ladies in the church are on our side too. We all believe that Jesus, the reason why we want to be "Christians" has been much different to the face that the church shows today.
So, to wrap it up, your critique is valid. These categories are annoying. but there is much more to this. Christians, asa category can also be developed. We are also ever changing and not as monolithic as it seems. xx
As someone from the town where this dude lives and wrote the book. Thank you! Everyone is obsessed with it, Christian and non Christian alike. I prescribed to it in the past but in my relationships (in practice) it made them feel synthetic or not genuine. I would perform acts I didn’t actually mean, and I didn’t want someone to give physical or any affection just because they thought they had to. It loses its meaning and the relationships just became check mark tasks no different than “don’t forget to send that work email”
i've never taken the love languages concept as like a one size fits all thing, they are just basics that hopefully get people into sorta understanding nd verbalizing their wants in a relationship. i'm an extremely touchy person and i have met women who do not like that and mostly its interpreted as being clingy. Everyone being familiar with the love language concept actually helps demystify or break gender norms often associated with love, the current version imo has helped foster inclusive open convo about love that isnt tied to gender norms.
While I agree that there are more than 5 Love Languages and they are limiting as they don't account for changing circumstances and situations, I think it can be helpful as a guide to understanding the people that we love, to ultimately bring us closer to them. For example, let's say someone tends to make breakfast for their loved one every morning but doesn't use their words to express love, and their loved one who prefers to be told they are loved may think their loved one does not love or appreciate them due to not being told they are valued as often as they would like. In this example, one person prefers words of affirmation and the other prefers acts of service. The words of affirmation person would then benefit from understanding that the acts of service person shows love differently. That's not to say that people should use this as an excuse to not show people love like they need to, but rather use it to bring understanding. The acts of service person can then consciously use their words more to show love, because they understand how the other person prefers to be loved
The test is now $55.
They only tell you after finishing the test, it's wild.
I’m a man and I LOVE acts of service. If someone is able to anticipate my needs and make things smoother or easier in pursuit of that, you got me.
I actually really like the model - like every model it breaks down a complex set of rules/relations into a somewhat graspable concept.
I also do actually believe that the dominant love language is worth something talking about - especially the idea that you may be affirming or touching your partner a lot, while he/she actually just wants more quality time with you or a few gifts sometimes is quite interesting. So you can literally try your best, yet your partner won't feel loved.
Also the words "love is a decision" are very powerful and in my experience 100% true. No chemicals work magic for 40y. So you need to commit and work FOR love.
It's been a while since a video has challenged something i've taken for granted quite so directly. This channel is great, thank you Alice.
thank you for talking about this! i grew up fundie-lite and i heard the 5 love languages at church way before the secular world started talking about it
Thinking of love as magical and unknowable does not protect you against oppression or abuse. If anything it means defaulting to traditional, patriarchal, ideals. You subconscious is not grabbing some image of pure love out of the ether, it is getting it from existing culture. So if anything a scientific approach has the potential to free you from patriarchal assumptions.
I get the purpose of the video but it missed the mark for me. As someone with a master’s in marriage and family therapy, the Five Love Languages are well know in therapy circles as being pop psychology to borderline pseudoscience.
It dresses up a very basic human concept. It feels good to be noticed and appreciated! Julie Gottman, who is one part of the absolute juggernaut of couple’s research (at least in the US, there is not a couple’s therapist who doesn’t know the Gottmans) nailed it. Context matters because people don’t actually have a specific love language. They just want their partner (and the people in their lives in general) to appreciate them, notice them, and love them.
More than anything, when people tell me that The Five Love Languages helped them, I say great. But from what I can tell what happened is a person actually started making effort in the relationship. They actively tried. They put some energy and thought into a person in their life and it *shocker* made the person feel better and improved the relationship in some way.
Edit: I will touch on the type of love languages typically ascribed to men and women. It turns out research actually shows that one person doesn’t just feel loved by one particular love language and actually both men and women crave physical affection, words of affirmations (validation from their partner), thoughtful gifts, and etc. It isn’t a gendered or heteronormative thing at all. People like to feel loved and appreciated in many different ways and context matters.
Okay, I am done. I could really talk about this for hours but Gary Chapman took a very simple concept and repackaged it and tried to make it way more complicated than it actually is.
I think the repacked simple idea with complicated undertones seems to be a lot of the self help market, I guess people juat want ro be told how to fix their peoblems easily and over explaining simple things make it sound easy.
I’ve been the patient in hundreds of therapy sessions with probably half a dozen therapists (freudians, cbt, dbt and more) and it has helped me quite a bit, so I’m not completely hating on it. But with respect, I’m curious to know where you found this high horse that you’re riding on because the average therapist in my experience is either loaded with stupid common sense advice that any child could give you (you should sleep more, you should eat better, we need to learn how to communicate more effectively) or their own version of pseudoscientific nonsense (“practice mindfulness” 😂). At least Chapman’s advice costs a one time payment of $20 rather than years of larger recurring payments. 😆
When you lack a concept giving it a label can help introduce a certain level of comprehension. However comprehension must develop beyond a label.
This was a pretty dense video for me so I had to rewatch it a few times to get your points, but thanks for your thoughts. I've never liked the love languages because, as you said, they are situational. In fact all of this pseudo-scientific genre of love languages, personalities, Hogwarts house quiz, etc. are necessarily one dimensional and too restrictive to appropriately capture the human experience. I appreciated the commentary that they also superimpose on top of societal norms and can inadvertently reinforce negative dynamics of certain cultural norms.
Unfortunately, I've seen lots of individuals, women in particular, make a single "love language" central to their identity, and then use it as a cudgel to demand a particular behavior from another. From your example of the woman whose husband didn't do the dishes or paint the bedroom, as you note, the true problem is that the husband doesn't help as he should, likely due to patriarchal norms. But it also makes me uncomfortable that the wife used love bombing to make him more pliable to her demands, and not try to convince him that he should help because he lives in a household and a partnership. It's nuanced, though, because it IS good to express appreciation often. What bothers me here is that she did it with the express purpose of trying to get him to paint the bedroom or whatever. If this were one of the women in my own family, she might in the future tell her husband that he must do a certain chore because her love language is "acts of service", and argue, frequently, that he doesn't love her if he doesn't do the chore she wants done. To me, this is manipulation. Why not instead argue that because they are in a partnership, she needs his help in the joint project of maintaining a household? Why need to question his devotion to her in exchange for a particular chore?
But I'm also uncertain if anything should change about how this women did things. I suspect that women in particular latch on to this love language pseudoscience because it gives them some amount of power in relationships where patriarchal norms otherwise disenfranchise them. Similar to how psychics, witches, essential oils folks, and crystal healers all lean strongly female, perhaps because these practices empower those women to reject the patriarchal counterparts in institutional religion and reclaim spirituality for themselves. It's tricky then because on the one hand, these women SHOULD be empowered, but on the other hand, the means by which they gain power are often manipulative or fraudulent. Thoughts or pushback?
I definitely feel far less horrid for being the irritating one in the group who seems to over analyze everything.
As an American, there seems to be an almost capitalistic flavor to the way love/romance is seen here. A desire to get more bang for your buck, the best bargain.
Getting complimented for the least amount of effort.
Being admired for almost no reason, or the illusion of one.
The intangible exchange rate on time to money, which seems to place money much higher.
The interview like process choosing a mate, and the crazy means of eliminating all risk from the process.
I could go on and on.
Thank you for your enlightening videos that sate my need for conversation for at least a moment.
I think the value there is finding words to express the different expectations of love between partners. Eg if one partner craved physical touch but their partner only expressed love through giving gifts, then yeah that's gonna leave both parties frustrated! But taking it as anything more than a tool for understanding that the way folks both express their love and how they wish to receive love, yeah nah it'd definitely not useful than anything more than that!
I generally feel these sorts of things could serve to help explore how you feel about certain things and situations. As long as you don't take them seriously. If the thought of thanking your spouse is that insanely foreign to you it might provide some enlightenment. Hopefully you can grow more.
Also, your father must be so proud.
This was so mind opening. I would love a video about psycho analysis from you
Co workers mentioned this in conversation several weeks ago and now this video. Universe and telecom companies in cahoots and eves dropping on personal conversations.
The creator of the paradigm is Baptist. You could have stopped there, but you went above and beyond once again.
i've always been against the concept of the love languages . i totally felt like it had the same goals and effects as all the trendy "aesthetic" . at first it starts out as "healthy " lifestyle where a human being can understand more things about himself and the people around him so that everyone get all "happy" but honestly the more it gets popular and trendy the more people get obssesed with it in a way where they want to "belong" and have this feeling of "control" over themselves when in reality the only one controling here is society who treats life as something linear that have to be in a sepecific category .for example me as someone who tend to express and receive love in so many ways i couldn't fit in this love languages thing , love is supposed to be something you just FEEL no matter how it is done, if the gesture is healthy and makes you happy then it is love that's it , and as a simple human you can constently crave diffrent types of love ,isn't rediculous that someone's only love language is "receiving gifts " it means that you can get in such a toxic relationship and it's okey just because they buy you gifts ... , the thing is yes maybe it MIGHT work with some people but it's not something to get obssedwith , another really toxic thing about is restricting your whole life over one thing and one category so taking these "life styles rules for a better life " too seriously would make you put your own brain in some sort off "prison" where you only "identify "as one thing and u can't be diffrentthings at the same time , great video by the way alice
"A very annoying trend that tends to depoliticize social problems/social realities into psychological problems" YES!!! This is an INCREDIBLY astute observation. It is everywhere! A book that began to talk about this decades ago is "The Triumph of the Therapeutic" by Philip Rieff, but we don't talk about this enough. I hope you keep writing and talking about it @AliceCappelle
shout out to dad over there. hope he's overcome his childhood trauma
Marriage isnt just about conservatives and nuclear family. Marriage is a legal institution that helps same sex and queer relationships too.
Another great video. As a psychologist, I feel like it's really necessary to debunk all these concepts that are rooted in conservatism. Love languages, body language, psychoanalysis or other sketchy personality types only makes everyone more insecure (especially women as you explained in your video) about having normal, genuine human interactions.
Sometimes this channel feels like "Alice Ruins Everything" - but not this time, not for me! I just read "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow, and the end of the book discusses how patriarchal society overlays relationships of care with relationships of violence and domination. (Even the word "domination" has the same root as the word "domestic!") It's really interesting to see the 5 love languages in that context. I had a partner who was into the five love languages and sometimes pressured me to tell them what my love language was... I was never sure why that bothered me, but this explains it well!
I never read the book or took the test, but I think that my mom and I would probably have different results because she likes the verbal affirmation and praise and words of love and hugs most, but I think I would have more of the other options like food gifts and acts of service, I am more likely to feel like I am showing love by making and giving her food but I know that she is not going to perceive that unless I also use my words and she knows that giving me special food spending time with me and helping me with things I find difficult will mean more to me than just words, I don’t know if that’s what the book was about but that is how I experience my relationship with my mom, and we both have more than one of those categories as primary ways we express ourselves so it is definitely not one or the other but a combination of several different love languages that seem to be closest to how I experience the world.
Nailed it - again.every. Single. Time. Please never stop Alice
I think the cool thing about the legacy of the love languages in pop culture, as interpreted by people who've never read the book, is the way that it ended up as a language for relationship roles, desires, and differences that's orthogonal to gender. I think that's why it's so appealing to a lot of queer folks--if you already have a queer relationship with categories and a tendency to view lists of 5 things as examples of a spectrum, it's pretty easy to apply the idea of love languages basically wherever you want and especially in places where straight people won't stop talking about brain sex or whatever.
I think it's still important to add in the stuff you're saying about treating needs you have in a given situation as static personality traits (hell, you could say the same thing about "gay", "straight", and "bi" themselves), but the queer and often memetic reinterpretations are the much more interesting version of the idea, I think.
SO to your nominally feminist point about how it's always women who think the love languages are transformative: I'm amab, but trans-nb/femme (so i can't say if my experience confirms or denies your claim ;), and the concepts in the book *absolutely* helped me understand my relationship dynamic with my partner, our kids, and also between my partner and our kids. My partner primarily feels love through acts of service, and frequently asks for service from all of us (for things they are perfectly able to do) as their coded "do you love me?" query. They also *show* love that way, by always things for other people - even if they are neither requested or desired - and can't understand why their service might not be appreciated.
That said, I do agree that the way some people use the text can be reductive, but I think that speaks more to the failures of those people, rather than to the ideas in the text.
i love the podcast episode if books could kill about the 5 love languages. it really dives into how chapman's goal is to keep couples from divorcing, even to the point where, in the first edition, he told a woman who was likely being sexually abused that her husband's love language is touch, and to initiate intimacy with him. to me, the general theme of the book, and therefore of the concept, is that you, the female partner, need to change your behavior for the man in your life to be more appreciative. compliment him, be nice and forgiving towards him, and forget that a partnership not under patriarchy requires an equal division of all labor, including invisible labor
@3:50 of course putting the garbage out is a normal thing to do, and it's not suggested in the book that it's unusual for Dan to do it. The idea is that she compliments him on the totally normal things he does all the time, and that makes him think 'oh i like getting complimented, i'm going to do something extra like painting the bedroom, then i'll get a really big compliment'
My parents applied this technique to my two siblings and me in the 1980s already, based on a parenting course. Within no time we were not doing more things, but we were complimenting their compliments: "that's so great that you are complimenting me for this, you should do that more often".
That's positive reinforcement, he taught her to basically try to train her husband into doing the things she wants.
That was really funny. Last week at my college, we were discussing Structuralism and how it impacted cinema. It's a way I see in general subjects today, that we have to categorize everything? Like, everything should be research as science? and because of that, we abandon our own instincts and don't trust them sometimes
Thank you so much for this message! It’s so needed right now.
This was an awesome video! And I actually found myself thinking how pleasant the audio of this video was, it wasn't bad audio at all!
Thanks a lot for your video. I deeply agree: queer approaches from the beginning try to defy categories ; from this point of view, any rigid typology of relations should be scrutinized and challenged.