Monday, March 5, 2012

The 5 Love Languages: Men’s Edition

Author: Gary Chapman

I’d no intention of reading the Men’s Edition of this book. I didn’t even know about it. So when I ordered it in the library I didn’t even realize it was the ME till I read the foreword and that’s when I flipped to the front cover and read the title! :-) However the content is quite generic and is applicable to men as well as women. The suggestions at the end of the chapters are what is specifically for men (husbands).

I loved reading the book. I think primarily because I believed in the proposal the author put forth. According to him every person has a love language – the language that makes him/her feel loved. When his/her spouse speaks that language he/she feels loved. For a happy marriage, you must know your spouse’ love language. If you don’t and are speaking a different language then however much you try it’s not going to make your spouse happy.

The author proposes that there are 5 love languages:

  1. Words of Affirmation
  2. Quality Time
  3. Acts of Service
  4. Receiving gifts
  5. Physical touch

The names are quite self-explanatory. As an example, if your spouse’ love language is “Acts of service”, which means that “doing“ something for her is what makes her happy then your cooking a meal would mean more to her than bringing her flowers. On the other hand if her love language is “receiving gifts” then your doing all the household chores wouldn’t make her as happy as bringing her flowers. You get the point.

There’s a chapter devoted to each language and then a few on how to infer your love language, your spouse’ love language and so on. Also I think that to some extent this is applicable to most relationships in life. Again, this is also discussed by the author in the FAQs on how this applies to children, etc. The book is simply written. I really enjoyed reading this book and would highly recommend it to every one out there – married or unmarried!

Bottom-line: Must read!

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