The Five Love Languages are Bullsh*t. Here’s Why.
Imagine walking into a restaurant and being told you can only eat one type of food for the rest of your life. Salad or steak. Spaghetti or chicken adobo. Choose one, and that's all you get.
Sounds absurd, doesn't it?
Yet, this is exactly what we've been doing with love for decades through the lens of the "Five Love Languages."
When Gary Chapman introduced the concept of love languages in his book, it resonated with millions.
Like many groundbreaking ideas, it offered a simple solution to a complex problem. It gave us a framework to understand why some relationships flourish while others falter.
And like many of us, I initially embraced it. After all, who wouldn't want a straightforward manual for making love work?
But here's the thing about simple solutions to complex problems: they're usually wrong.
The Comfortable Lie vs. The Uncomfortable Truth
Gary Chapman is an evangelical pastor and marriage counselor. In his book “The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts,” he identified the now famous “5 Love Languages.”
The love languages theory suggests that each person has a primary way of expressing and receiving love:
Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Receiving Gifts
Quality Time
Physical Touch.
Choose your love language, and you've unlocked the secret to lasting love.
It's a comforting thought. It's also fundamentally flawed (or just plain bullsh*t to be brutally honest.)
Recent research by Emily Impett, Haeyoung Gideon Park, and Amy Muise has shattered this comfortable illusion we love to recycle.
Their findings?
People don't just respond well to one love language—they respond to all of them.
More importantly, sharing the same "primary" love language with your partner showed no additional contentment and that all expressions of love were equally valued, regardless of love language.
This shouldn't surprise us.
After all, when was the last time you heard someone say, "I only want compliments from my partner—they can skip the hugs, quality time, and thoughtful gestures"?
The Real Cost of Love Languages
The danger isn't just in oversimplification—it's in what this oversimplification makes us do.
We've created a generation of relationship consumers who treat love like a product specification:
"Sorry, we're not compatible—your love language is Acts of Service, and mine is Words of Affirmation."
"I don't need to spend quality time with you; I show my love through gifts."
These aren't relationship insights—it’s an excuse.
Your love language is not an excuse. Yet, we treat the very expression of love as a way to excuse our shortcomings.
It’s All About Balance
Love, like nutrition, requires balance.
Just as our bodies need a complex mix of nutrients to thrive, our relationships need a diverse palette of expressions to thrive.
The researchers propose viewing love as a "balanced diet" rather than a single-language system.
Love is not akin to a language one needs to learn to speak but can be more appropriately understood as a balanced diet in which people need a full range of essential nutrients to cultivate lasting love. (Impett et al., 2024)
Think about your closest relationships. The moments that matter most aren't usually isolated to a single category:
A partner who holds your hand (Physical Touch) while listening to your problems (Quality Time)
A friend who helps you move (Acts of Service) while offering encouragement (Words of Affirmation)
A parent who cooks your favorite meal (Acts of Service) and shares family stories (Quality Time)
The magic isn't in the individual actions—it's in how they weave together to create something greater than the sum of their parts.
To confine love to just a group of five categories is not only limiting, it’s plain ridiculous.
The Path Forward
The time has come to move on from the kindergarten of love languages to a more mature understanding of relationship dynamics.
This doesn't mean dismissing Chapman's work entirely—his framework has helped millions spark important conversations about their needs and advocate for better relationships.
But it's time to recognize it for what it is: a starting point, not a destination.
Instead of asking "What's your love language?" try these:
"How do different expressions of love make you feel?"
"What combinations of care and attention help you feel most valued?"
"How can we create a more open conversation of love in our relationship?"
Because love—like humans—can’t be confined to little boxes, labeled, and expected to give a complete picture of reality.
Conclusion
The greatest relationships aren't built on matching love languages—they're built on the willingness to speak all languages of love, even the ones that don't come naturally to us.
They're built on the understanding that love, like life itself, is beautifully complex and resistant to oversimplification.
The next time someone asks about your love language, perhaps the best answer is: "I'm fluent in all of them, and I'm always learning new dialects."
Because love isn't about finding the right category.
It's about embracing the wonderful complexity of human connection in all its forms. And in that complexity lies the true beauty of love—not despite its resistance to simple categorization, but because of it.
The real question isn't "What's your love language?" It's "How can we make our relationship thrive, regardless of our love languages?"
