The Myth of Love Languages

Last weekend, two married friends and I took our kids to a local theme park for a day out together. We were talking about how I was planning to write an episode for Relationship Doctor about a common myth about relationships: love languages. While she was aware that love languages were not scientific, her husband looked really sad to hear that. “Love languages aren’t real?” he asked, and his wife responded, “Well, no, but I needed a way to get you to open up and talk to me about stuff.” 

In 1992, Gary Chapman wrote the book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, and it took the world by storm. Marital therapists, relationship coaches, and romance enthusiasts heavily bought into the idea that there are five ways to express love to your partner, that we have preferences for how to give and receive love, and that you can improve your relationship just by tailoring your affection to your partner’s love language.

On his website, Chapman proclaims, “The premise of The 5 Love Languages™ book is quite simple: different people with different personalities give and receive love in different ways. By learning to recognize these preferences in yourself and in your loved ones, you can learn to identify the root of your conflicts, connect more profoundly, and truly begin to grow closer.”

Here’s the thing: Gary Chapman is not a relationship scientist, and although he has a PhD, it is in education and he does not conduct relationship research. Chapman's five love languages were not driven by data, and his book is not based in science. In writing his book, he had no generalizable evidence that people have different preferences for giving and receiving love. He had no evidence that they are connected to your personality. He had no evidence that misunderstanding your own and your partner’s love languages could contribute to conflicts emerging.

What makes this unscientific book so catchy?

Whenever I talk about my research to someone new, inevitably they will bring up their love language and get excited to talk about it. Like other pop culture quizzes, such as the Myers-Briggs personality assessment (which is...

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