refer to the popular idea that people differ in how they express affection and the ways they wish to receive it. This hypothesis involves
: words of affirmation, spending quality time together, gift-giving, acts of service, and physical touch. Despite its popularity, the concept of love languages remains relatively under-explored by researchers.
To deepen understanding, Mostova and colleagues studied 100 heterosexual couples who had been together for six months to 24 years. Participants aged 17 to 58 completed a questionnaire with questions developed in prior research on love languages.
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The questionnaire evaluated participants’ preferred love languages when expressing love to their partner and, in turn, which love languages their partner most make them feel loved. These data enabled the researchers to identify the degree of any mismatches within each couple. They also assessed participants’ relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and empathy.
This analysis showed that, for both men and women, participants whose partners used the love languages they preferred to receive had higher levels of relationship and sexual satisfaction.
Greater satisfaction was also found among participants who reported using the love languages their partners preferred to receive.
The researchers had hypothesized that empathy would be associated with a greater tendency for a participant to use the love language their partner prefers to receive. However, while the analysis showed some small support for certain sub-types of empathy affecting male participants’ relationship experiences, this hypothesis was not supported overall.
While the study only included heterosexual couples, the researchers suggest that focusing on partners’ love-language needs might be effective in relationship counseling. They also offer several directions for future research, such as examining whether love-language matching causes greater satisfaction or instead arises from it or an entirely different factor.
The authors add: “Our findings suggest that people who better match each other’s preferences for love languages are more satisfied with their relationships and sexual life. Dimensional assessment may be preferable to typologizing love languages.”
Source: Eurekalert
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