Last week, I read through a really amazing book called “The Five Love Languages,” by Gary Chapman. It’s a pretty quick read, and I got through it in just a few days. After reading it, I encouraged my fiancé to read it as well. When he was nearing the end of the book a couple of days later, he suddenly put it down and turned to me. He told me that he thought this book is one that everybody should read. Truthfully, I could not agree more!

The main argument that Chapman makes in this book is that people express love in several different ways. To some, physical affection is the best way to tell a person that they are loved. To others, acts of kindness speak of love the loudest. In fact, Chapman asserts that there are five different ways that people generally give and receive love—the five love languages. They are words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, quality time, and physical touch.

According to this book, most marital (and really any relationship) problems come from a miscommunication of love. For example, if Jessica’s primary love language is physical touch but her husband Paul’s is words of affirmation, there could be serious problems. Jessica might try to show her love for her husband by giving him backrubs, kissing him, and having sex with him. However, Paul will not necessarily see these things as very loving. That’s because to Paul, love is shown best by speaking it. Paul tells Jessica that he loves her, that she is beautiful, and that she is an amazing wife; that is how he expresses his love. But to Jessica, these things don’t mean that much. She wants to be loved physically. As time goes on, both Jessica and Paul are trying their hardest to be loving spouses, but neither one of them feels truly loved by the other. Thus, a simple love language miscommunication can put great emotional distance between people, and even lead to empty marriages that end in divorce.

The concept is so simple, yet it makes a ton of sense! In the process of reading through it, I found that many of the tips for expressing love in the correct love language would be great ways for my fiancé to show me that he loves me, and vice versa. I also realized that all of the love languages are important. Even though every person has primary and secondary love language, the other three can and should still be used to express our love to our spouses. Just by reading about all of the ways to show my fiancé that I love him, I was inspired to be a more loving future-wife.

At the end of the book, there is a short quiz to help you identify your primary and secondary love languages. I was excited to take the test and find out my own preferred expression of love! As it turns out, I’m bilingual. Both quality time and physical touch were equally matched as my primary love languages. Coming in second place, as my secondary, was words of affirmation. That means that the best ways to love me are through physical affection, spending time with me, and using words. Coincidentally, my fiancé’s primary love language is physical touch and his secondary is words of affirmation. Luckily for us, we share the same primary and secondary languages! Of course, he still has a little bit more work to do by giving me some quality time. Fortunately, we tend to spend almost all of our time together as it is and so far, he isn’t sick of me. After reading this book, I understand why we both feel so loved by each other all of the time as well as how we can improve. We are lucky to be natural speakers of each other’s languages, and now we are both well-educated on how we can love each other even more fully.

Of course, for most couples, the husband and wife do not share the same love languages. In these cases, both spouses must learn to speak the correct language to their partner. Luckily, the book is full of tips on how to do this! Whether you need to learn to use words, gifts, touch, time, or actions to express your love, there are plenty of great, simple ideas available right here.

I highly recommend this book to anybody in a relationship. Though it is based on Christian principles, the ideas can be applied by anybody. It not only works for marriages and romantic relationships, but for relationships with parents, children, other family members, and friends as well. In fact, Gary Chapman has an entire collection of books in the love languages series, including a men’s edition, “The Five Love Languages of Children,” “The Five Love Languages of Teenagers,” and “The Five Love Languages: Singles Edition.” Personally, I’m looking forward to reading the one about children so that I can learn to speak my child’s love language when the time comes.

So what about you? What’s your love language? I encourage you to read this book not only for your own benefit, but for the benefit of anybody whom you share a relationship with.

Good luck and happy loving!