I joined an online dating site a few months ago.1 In addition to being asked about sun, moon and rising signs (?), I was puzzled by the following questions.2
My love language? Should I only choose one answer?
Gary Chapman has been pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC for 50 years. In 1992, he published a book based on his experience advising heterosexual couples on the best ways to have a harmonious marriage. His notion of 5 love languages is based on conservative Christian gender roles, although subsequent editions are “less overtly misogynistic.“ Nevertheless, the popularity of his ideas extends far beyond this initial demographic and has (ironically) invaded very Queer spaces.
Anyone can take The Love Language® Quiz. I stopped after the first question because it forces you to choose between “a loving note/text/email for no particular reason“ and a hug. Under all circumstances.
Even my cat has more than one love language. There are three, which vary according to her needs:3
And as humans, why must we limit ourselves to the five choices above, when the possibilities are endless? Here are some examples.4
New love languages
by James Folta and Kasey Borger
Decide where to eat
Let your stressed-out partner know you’re real by choosing a place to eat. This is a love language that every single person wants, but almost no one can express. Looks like it’s frozen pizza again.Talk about your commute
There is an extremely high concentration of individuals with this love language in New York and LA. Going on and on around trains, or highways, or traffic, or “I think it took me 25 minutes last time, but this time it took 35 – weird” is the only way this group can show their girlfriend they care.Explain how you feel about Facebook
Some people can only express their love by unprompted exclaiming that they are going to delete their Facebook, and for real this time. Studies show that this can be difficult to discern as a love language because it is unbearable.
…and my personal favorite:
Responding to but not liking tweets
This is a dark and terrible way of expressing affection, but we must grudgingly admit it.
Love language on a Likert scale
As any decent social psychologist will tell you, The Love Language® Quiz has poor psychometric properties, meaning that the validity and reliability of the measuring instrument is very low. A remarkable number of studies have examined the concept of love language, and there is no empirical support for the idea, as recently reviewed by Impett, Park, and Muise (2023). A major problem is the way Chapman formulates his questions (as forced choices between two options). Instead, rating each item on continuous Likert scales will reveal no relationship between scores on the quiz and scores on the continuous measure. “These findings reject the notion that each person has a primary love language and illustrate that people value all five love languages, but perhaps in different contexts,“ said Impett and colleagues.
So why is Do you like languages so popular?
“If I had to pick one reason why I think many couples find Chapman’s book helpful,” says (co-author Haeyoung Gideon) Park, “it’s not because they learned their own or their partner’s love language, but because it makes people identify any unmet needs in their relationship and opens up lines of communication to meet those needs.”
Footnotes
1 I won’t say which one. I’m in a demographic that absolutely no one cares about.
2 It’s clear that I don’t belong in my own demographic.
3 Sometimes she likes more than one at the same time (eg petting while eating).
4 When forced to choose, my preferred language is love Sarcasm and hyperbolethat doesn’t make me popular with the online dating set.
Reference
– click to enlarge Table –
