According to Chapman, the five ways of expressing and experiencing love between partners which he calls "love languages" are:
Receive gifts
Spending fun times
Words of affirmation
Service business
physical contact
He provides examples from his counseling work, as well as examples to help define the reader's love language.
Chapman claims to provide a comprehensive list of love languages ??in his book. According to his theory, everyone has a primary and a secondary love language.
Chapman says the way to discover other people's love language is to observe how they express their love to others, analyze what they complain about and what they most often demand from their partners. He theorizes that people naturally tend to give love in ways in which they prefer to receive love, and better communication between pairs can be achieved when each can show interest in the other through a love language that the recipient understands. Example: When a husband's love language is service work, he may be confused when he does laundry for his wife and she does not receive it as an expression of love, and simply sees it as doing his homework, because the love language she understands is words of affirmation (verbal affirmation of his love for her). She may try to use what she deems valuable, words of affirmation, to express her love for him, and he will not appreciate it the way she does. When she understands his love language and mows his lawn, he will receive it through his love language as an act of love, and when he tells her he loves her, she will appreciate it as an expression of love.
There has been insufficient research to test the validity of Chapman's model and whether it can be generalized. Egbert (2006) argues that The Five Love Languages ??may be correct to some extent as a psychometric regardless of its theoretical nature.