Thearcheorizer

After my marriage when I looked for books to read on relationships, I had this on my to be read list. Somehow forgotten until I saw this book in the shop Borders, Mall of Emirates. Even after purchasing it took my a month to start reading.

The introduction made me feel like that book would go on and on about the author’s counseling sessions with his clients. The tone and the beginning part made me feel like there’s only going to be author’s pride how he dealt every cases.

But my perspective quickly shifted once I started seeing the light upon the couples problems, especially unearthing the root cause and the practical solutions or simple required changes to save the marriage or to live a happy married life.

(If you don’t want spoilers, please stop here and come back after reading the book)

The book goes in this flow of

i) why it’s named as love language

ii)what are those 5 love languages in a relationship

iii)love is a choice

iv)guidance for discovering one’s own and partner’s love language

v)frequently asked questions

Just like any other language, only if both the communicating parties are aware of the language spoken, then can understand and response accordingly. If not, no one understands and it’s a chaos. The same way each person speaks their love in different forms which the author categorizes into 5 types.

1. Words of affirmation – compliments, praises, verbalizing the positive lovely emotion

2. Quality time – spending time together, especially being physically and mentally present for your partner

3. Receiving gifts – size or prize doesn’t matter, the act of expressing love in terms of gifts

4. Acts of service – taking care and doing the needful things and taking responsibilities like paying bills, cleaning the house, helping in chores

5. Physical touch – physical intimacy and expressing the warmth of love especially at the need as hugging or patting during sad moments

Now you might wonder, everyone obviously do all the five categories.. then why isn’t everyone happy..

Here’s why.. speaking your partner’s dialect is very important as much as the love language..

For example: Your partner might expect you to give words of affirmation for cooking a special dish and if you keep complimenting all day for every other things and not the dish.. then the partner won’t feel loved and you might’ve no clue what’s happening or why your partner isn’t happy..

In order to solve this, the author suggest to ask your partner for top 3-5 things on their love language so that one doesn’t miss what matters the most to their partner.

What if one doesn’t know their partner’s love language or one’s own love language….???

The author has provided a questionnaire set to figure out the love language. You can also try using this link – Find your love language

In case your partner isn’t ready to read the book or take the test, you can figure it out by speaking each language for 5 days a week and then notice the difference in your partner.

Apart from the entire summary of the book, the writing style is in simple English that anyone can understand. Still, I learnt quite a few new words, especially limerence.

Usually, my eyes catch up the printing or grammatical errors. But I didn’t find any may be cause I was caught up with the content more than just reading. There are places where I felt life would be tough,the author has mentioned Bible verses, which felt so good to me. Because the act of loving, especially when a partner feels not loved, is difficult. Every couple loves each other for sure, but expressing the same in a lovely way isn’t always easy in relationships. But thinking of Jesus will certainly boost to keep going and loving one’s partner more and more. Some readers criticize this area where they say the author is pushing a person to stay in abusive relationships and situations. But to an extent, I would say one has to go through certain hardships to stay and live happily in the marriage. Only that person would know what is needed. It’s always easy to say one to walk away from their marriage at the time of hardships. But don’t forget to see that whoever encourages to separate as a solution are clever enough to hold tight during hurdles and then continue living with their partner and provide a happy mom & dad to their children. That’s how world is. So it’s always up to the individual to decide whether to simply stay in the relationship or improve and grow together as a couple or just walk away (most people regret the last option, only a handful get a better life without regrets)

On the whole, one should love their partner in the partner’s likings. This book gives you the idea of which area to focus on and how to make you also feel emotionally content by figuring out your primary love language.

My ratings are

I highly recommend this book to every adult.

Kindly share your thoughts on this book and review in the comments..