How to understand the languages of love: the different ways to communicate “I love you”

I’m not expert on relationships and love. I’m just struggling and trying to do my best as everyone else.
I am quite happy right now and think that I finally learned through some hard lessons how to make a relationship work and, most important, how to fix any problem might arise between me and my significant other.

After my last important story ended quite abruptly, I was left thinking what went wrong.
Talking with a friend of mine gave me the much needed illumination and helped me clarify a thought that was hiding somewhere in the recess of my brain.

Her story was more or less so: she loved his boyfriend, he loved her back. They were talking about marriage. One day, they split . Trying to find a rational explanation to what happened to her and her boyfriend, my friend stumbled upon a book : Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate .

Chapman says in his book that there are five ways to communicate “I love you” to our significant other. Every one of us uses a combination of these five ways, or languages, but each one of us uses one predominant language to communicate the simple but important message of “I love you” and is more responsive to answers given in the same language. Many couples have problems because the partners truly love each other, but communicate their feelings using different languages and can’t understand each other.
According to my friend, this is what doomed her relationship: she and her boyfriend didn’t realize they were telling each other “I love you” in different languages and weren’t able to understand the language spoken by the other one.

I completely relate to that! It was the same doubt that was nagging me: my relationship was healthy, but we – mostly me – weren’t able to understand the other when she was saying “I love you, I care for you, I want to be with you”.

So I did a little research and found out what are the five languages of love according to Gary Chapman .

• - Words of Affirmation : these are literally the things you say to your significant other. Compliments, appreciations, words of encouragement , “I love you”.
• - Quality Time : spending time together, focusing all your attention and energies on your significant other. It’s time you and your partner spend in each other’s company, talking, listening, doing things together and sharing experiences. Conversation is very important to open up to each other, or just to listen the other one vent with a sympathetic listener. Doing things together, even simple things as going to a museum or preparing dinner can reinforce a relationship.
• - Receiving Gifts : for many persons a gift is a visual representation of love. They treasure any gift as an expression of love and devotion and may feel that a lack of gift represents a lack of love and attention. Of course to be effective a gift must not necessarily be expensive, but must be something that reveals that we thought about it and know what our partner may like. Under some circumstances, quality time may be seen as the “gift of oneself”.
• - Acts of Service : doing something for the person we love. Simple chores, like washing dishes, walking the dog, doing the laundry, cooking or taking out the trash. Everything that takes a burden off the shoulders of our partner is an act of service that communicates the idea of “I care for you”.
• - Physical Touch : this includes sex, but goes well beyond that. Physical touch comes also in the form of caresses, hugging, walking hand in hand, massages and it’s important to understand the type of touch our significant other responds to and wants, and what kind of touch may be uncomfortable for him or her. Sometimes an hug or caress can communicate more love of any words.

Do I agree on these five languages found by Chapman? No, not entirely, I think the languages may be different, there may be more – but it may be so because I’m most responsive to some kind of languages.
But I do believe that we all have our own way of saying to our partner that we love them, care for them and are here for them. And each one of us has a language that we better understand and want to receive the message in that language . To better understand it, to be reassured by it, to completely believe in the message our partner is sending us.

I have learned that even when there is a deep love between two persons, a breakdown in communications can cause a crisis. And to solve it and save our relationship we, us and our partners, must understand what is the language our partner is most responsive to, and learn to express our love in that language .
It may be hard, but not as hard as losing the person we love. And it’s our duty to do everything we can to keep our relationships alive.