My husband and I learned about the five love languages early in our marriage, and we figured we knew each other pretty well.

Recently, I ran across the assessment online, and we both took it. Although there wasn’t anything totally unexpected, we were a little surprised at how our results had shifted from what we remembered! It was a good check-in with each other.

At first, the test seems light-hearted, reminiscent of teen magazine quizzes… You know, the ones like:

Would you rather your future husband would be:
A. a reckless rock star,
B. an earthy herpetologist,
C. a philanthropic photojournalist,
D. a wealthy CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or
E. all of the above?

The 5 Love Languages assessment deals with deeper issues, though.

Here’s the link to the assessment, if you want to take it: 5 Love Languages Assessment

The Languages are:

Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Physical Touch
Receiving Gifts
Quality Time

I always thought I was a Words of Affirmation person. This assessment gave me an unexpected score because:
1) it targets specific relationships, and
2) the questions are phrased in terms of how you receive affection, not how you give it.

Guess what I was – not Words of Affirmation!

Out of 12 possible points, I scored 11 on Quality Time. I don’t care what my husband and I are doing, I just want to be together.

Guess what my husband’s highest language was…

We’ve always known he leans strongly toward Acts of Service. I took the test first, and I scored a whopping zero on Acts of Service. If serving is the only way my husband receives love, our marriage is doomed! 🙂

I was relieved that, for him, Acts of Service tied for first with Physical Touch. We’re that couple who will still be holding hands when we’re 60 years old.

On a deeper level, our scores explain why a perfectly good evening can be ruined for me by uptightness over tasks… like if we’re at the grocery store and we forget the shopping list. In my mind, we’re there together… enjoying each other right now, at this moment! Life is good!

It also explains why a perfectly good evening can be ruined for him by a task that didn’t get done. How can we enjoy cooking a stir-fry together if we didn’t get the ingredients we needed?

It’s good to remember how our different love languages affect how we interpret the same events, and how they shape our reactions and tendencies over the years.




Happy Wednesday!