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"The Five Love Languages" is literally trademarked. It's a framework that's designed to sound plausible, like a horoscope. It's not designed to be accurate, it'

• hallway_monitor 5y ago
  You're probably right but does that mean it can't also contain some useful truths? Personally, these types of frameworks do help me break out of my own self centered paradigm and appreciate differences in friends, coworkers and partners. For work teams I highly recommend the DISC survey. I do agree with the part about not touching though. It seems like a lot of problems are invented in marriages because people are unwilling or unable to say or even think the ugly truth that they simply don't want to have sex with their partner anymore.
  • MillenialMan 5y ago
    In my opinion the issue with pop-psych marketing constructs is that there are kernels of truth embedded within a misleading superstructure. They tend to leave you worse off because the structure (which is wrong, incomplete, misleading) is bundled with the kernels of truth. They also usually purport to be rosetta stones. There are exactly five love languages, and humans happen to each speak a different variety of them? Hmmmmm. Another example: what if someone feels "loved" when they're bought gifts, but that's because they're materialistic, a gold digger? Likewise if someone wants to be touched because they're more interested in sex than a relationship, and they derive validation from your sexual interest. "It's just their Love Language" is technically correct, but it's the wrong lens to apply to those situations.
    • PeterisP 5y ago
      One thing is that those aspects map to quite real needs, and the book does provide a set of reasonable metaphors to talk about those needs between partners in a way that gets the point across where previous attempts didn't succeed. It's genuinely hard for many people to define and communicate their own feelings and expectations, and even more so for someone else's feelings and expectations, complicated by the natural tendency to presume that other's preferences work similarly to yours, so a framework that helps this communication is really useful in those cases where relationship problems involve a misunderstanding about those expectations; which is not all relationship problems but certainly a meaningful part of them. In the examples you provide, I would say that it's exactly the right lens to apply to those situations - it's imperative for both parties to understand that those are the factors that matter instead of trying to work out a relationship around them, ignoring those core issues; and this lens allows to understand/specify/communicate it better. Like, if someone does derive validation from your sexual interest, then that's a quite important thing to understand for the partner (even if for them personally the concept of needing such validation is a bit alien, because their self-worth is filled differently), because that's not going to change easily and is going to be a big factor in making the relationship work. And if someone is materialistic, pretending otherwise won't be helpful and neither will trying to change someone's values, that generally takes huge time and effort and/or crisis events. Of course, obtaining a proper understanding may also mean understanding that the relationship should not continue, but for such relationships that's also a beneficial result. There may be more effective ways of facilitating this communication and common understanding of the partner's inner needs, e.g. perhaps couple's therapy can do it faster, but that's a quite expensive process and a simplified set of metaphors can be a cheap and useful approach ("A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points") if there's sufficient material to ensure that both partners, likely coming from very different perspectives given that they have this communications problem, get a common understanding of how they understand them.
      • MillenialMan 5y ago
        I don't mean this disrespectfully, but your comment is a perfect example of someone falling into the trap I was describing. If someone's using you, they don't love you. They won't love you. It doesn't matter what their "love language" is - giving them the thing they're looking to extract isn't going to help, it's just going to get you exploited.
• tablespoon 5y ago
  > "The Five Love Languages" is literally trademarked. So? > It's a framework that's designed to sound plausible, like a horoscope. It's not designed to be accurate, it's designed to make you go, "oooooh" and repeat the trademark. "Having relationship issues? Oh, have you heard of the Love Languages®? I read about it the other day..." That sounds like you think it was constructed in bad faith. Do you have any evidence for that? A model that's simplified can still have value even if it doesn't perfectly fit every situation. > If your partner doesn't want to touch you, what's the most likely explanation? That they "don't speak your love language", or that they aren't attracted to you? I'm only passingly familiar with the love languages thing, but I think it does have a point, and I've experienced some of the differences in relationships that is schematizes. Reducing it to sexual attraction is kinda missing the point.
  • MillenialMan 5y ago
    Plenty of it has a point - so does Cosmo. The problem is that it's a psychological model written primarily to be sold. You're welcome to put your trust in that, but I think that's a mistake, and the way that type of stuff usually hurts people is that the model being peddled cuts off deeper understanding of human relationships.