Gary Chapman’s best selling book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate posits five ways that we express and experience love:
• Words of Affirmation
• Acts of Service
• Receiving Gifts
• Quality Time
• Physical Touch

Everyone has a primary and a secondary love language. These are the things that we recognise most as “love” when we receive them. But, he writes about how in successful healthy relationships what is more important is how you EXPRESS love. You need to understand your partner’s love languages.

The theory is that if we’re not observant, we will fall back on our own love languages in our relationship. People tend to give love in the way they like to receive love.

This can create a mismatch, which can lead to miscommunication, misunderstanding and problems in the relationship.

For example, if we feel most appreciated and loved when we get quality time from our partners, we might make the assumption that our partner feels the same way. But for them, unless it is combined with physical touch they might not feel as strongly about how it is expressing love as you do.

It’s important to understand your own Love Languages so you know what expression you’re most likely to fall back on, and your partner’s Love Languages so you can consciously express your affection in a way they understand.

The way to discover your partner’s love language is to observe them. What do they complain about most often? What do they ask for most often? When are they delighted with the relationship and when do they seem underwhelmed?

It can be a little harder to observe yourself, but Gary Chapman’s site has an online quiz to help you with that.

DISCOVER YOUR LOVE LANGUAGES

OTHER FUN BDSM QUIZZES

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• What’s Your BDSM Role?
• The Submissive Test – What’s Kind of Submissive Are You?
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