All About Love

Gary Chapman is a marriage counselor who has been helping people for a number of years. Over time he saw what so many people have been scratching their heads over on how to make a marriage work. He has found that there are five different ‘love languages’. He has since written many books on this subject and taught many seminars. He started by writing a book for married couples. But people asked if he had any books out for singles. He has since written on married couples, singles, teenagers, children, military marriages, and even a special edition written for men on love languages.

Each book has the general information on the five languages and exactly what they mean. He then goes on to give examples with cases that he has dealt with over the years. (Don’t worry, he changes the names.) Most people have two languages they want to receive from others and that they themselves give to others. Most people don’t consciously realize that they do this until they read one of Chapman’s books, then they can see how they have been showing love to other people.

Most relationships in their early stages, i.e. dating, go well between couples. For many it’s after the marriage that the relationship between the couple starts going downhill. The book says how when most people are dating, they show four or five of the languages to their partner, but after marriage they think everything is set between them and stop using all the love languages and return to just the two languages they are used to using. In most cases the husband and the wife don’t have the same two languages so fiction starts showing in their marriage. They start complaining about what the other believes to be little things which grows into big things. But what they are really saying (even if they don’t consciously know it), is, “I don’t feel like you love me like you used to, because you aren’t showing me through my love language how I best feel loved.”

I’m not going to go into all the love languages, but one of the easiest to explain is the receiving gifts language. Most men give their date a gift, whether it’s flowers or jewelry or whatever. Many men stop giving their wives gifts all the time, whether it’s become too costly, too much time to pick one out, or they think it’s no longer needed. But if the woman’s love language is receiving gifts, and her husband no longer gives her anything except on her birthday and maybe their anniversary and/or Valentine’s Day, then the woman may start to feel like he doesn’t love her as much. The husband may love her more than he did on their wedding day, but the wife doesn’t feel that way anymore. (That does not mean that all husbands should immediately go out and buy their wife’s flowers. Receiving gifts is only one of the five love languages and not all women have that language.)

The original book ‘The Five Love Languages’ of course deals with married couples and has been around since 1992. This book has been reprinted many times, so there must be some truth and helpful hints in this book or it wouldn’t still be around. For those of you who have a failing marriage or just want to put the romance back in their marriage should get this book.

‘The Five Love Languages for Singles’ focuses more on dealing with your roommates, your classmates, your family, your friends, your date, and your coworkers. The love languages are the same but the examples are different. This book also helps you how to show other people that you love and care about them without making the other people feel that you romantically love them (like your roommates, your classmates, your friends, and your coworkers). Everyone wants to feel loved by other people, whether we want to admit that or not.

The rest of the books should be self-explanatory. In the back of each book is a test on how to find out which two of the five languages are yours. Some of you might be surprised on the results, where as many will realize what their language is as you read the book. I highly recommend these books and suggest that you pick out which one (or ones) work for you and read up.