Very Insightful and Resourcedul

There’s not much about this book that I couldn’t like. It was an astonishing read by very good insight for those of us “soul searching” to be the better “version” of ourselves in a relationship. It’s a page turner and it provides one an opportunity to self reflect.

Nice and easy read. Though it caters to a Christian crowd, the information is universal. What I like about the author is he’s straightforward and offers multiple examples for finding your love language and fulfilling your partner’s love language. To summarize, love is like an oil tank in a car. The oil in it will decrease no matter what. You have to maintenance the tank regularly in order to remain maintain a healthy vehicle(relationship). Love takes consistent work. That’s what makes it worth it. In the past, I found it difficult to verbally express my feelings, so Gary’s guide on Words of Affirmation really helps. The chapter on finding your partner’s love language was great too.

Words of affirmation:
- pick one thing every fews day to specifically compliment her on.
- Borrow positive message from gift cards that specifically convey your feelings for her if needed.
- Admit faults in an introspective way
Quality Time:
- Undivided attention when spending time together.
- Eye contact during conversation
- Only give advice when asked
- Do not express frustration
- Do not interrupt
- Keep track of feelings in notebook. Event/Feelings 3x per day
Gift giving
- One per week if this is their love language
- Symbolic gifts
- Surprises
- Gifts that compliment hobbies/other gifts
Acts of Service
- Make a list of things that the other could do to make you happy. Vice versa
Physical Touch
- Embrace the embrace
- Make it a point to touch multiple times a day
- Offer activities that involve touch
- Embrace partner’s pet ownership
- Take care of her when she’s sick

Figure out love languages together
- Write down love languages in order of importance to you.
- Remember what partner did that made you fall in love
- Sit with partner and tell them what you believe is their love language. Listen closely to their response/input.
- Tank check: on a scale of 0-10, what is your love tank on? Then ask what you can do to increase the number.

Choose love: when angry about a past discretion, choose love. Past is the past

Of the many practical marriage books which give suggestions for improving your marriage relationship, I've found the Five Love Languages books quite helpful. Learn how your spouse receives love, and learn to show your love to her in those ways. This book even moves a step closer to the heart of the issue, which many marriage books don’t, by making clear that learning to love your spouse like this is a sacrificial and costly choice to put the other person first.

(Some broader reflections: The book still doesn’t resolve the ultimate issue in marriage - since my spouse can never meet my needs perfectly, how is it possible for me to continue to love them with a lifetime of sacrificial and costly love? This is why I recommend books about the meaning of Christian marriage before I recommend more 'practical' marriage books. The key gospel insight is that we can only lay down our lives for our spouses because Jesus has laid down his life for us. Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage was the book which most helped me understand this: “Do for your spouse what God has done for you in Jesus, and the rest will take care of itself.” The Five Love Languages, which isn’t a Christian book in any meaningful way, doesn’t get to the heart of this issue.)

Nonetheless, I've found the love language concept a helpful way to grow in understanding my wife, and learning to love her better, and reading this men’s version has encouraged and reminded me a number of ways I can keep growing in this. The “for men” concept is well executed — I think it would help men who don’t often read to get through the book.

Words of affirmation: I know, I’m with you, how can I help?
Dont make demands, make requests. Demands kill love while requests let it show. Show encouragement and support. “I know if you decide to try this you will be a success.” “Dont worry about cost, we will make this work.” Be kind, if someone shares hurt and pain with you even if they use hurtful words towards you; forgive them and try to understand the source of their pain. Dont try to prove your point of view. A soft answer turns away anger. You can’t erase the past, ask forgiveness and give forgiveness to your partner. Forgiveness is the way of love.

Give specific compliments. That color looks great on you, It really impressed me how you spoke with that woman, give words of encouragement to file dreams. Offer a deal where you are on the losing end. I’ll clean the attic if you make your amazing apple pie
Listening: make eye contact the whole time. Dont listen and do something else (if you’re in the middle of something be honest and say I will in 10 minutes), listen for feelings (what emotion is your spouse expressing; confirm with her it sounds like you’re feeling x because y), pay attention to body language, DO NOT interrupt

Quality Time: have meaningful discussions. Partners should share 3 details of their day at a minimum for healthy communication. In addressing quality time respect if the partner likes to get up early or go to bed later for the activities. Sacrifice something you love for the activity to send a powerful message you love her more than other things, make a list of top 10 moments of memories as a couple and then compare to her list and then use the overlapping matches to create new memories, be attentive, designate times and places for togetherness (Not all time together needs to be quality time), if your partner is usually busy you should occasionally do 1 or more of her dreaded chores to free her up for quality time, find an activity you like to do that compliments what she enjoys (find joint activities), dont let all your conversations be to do lists, surprise her with 2 tickets to a movie she wants to see and then take her to dinner and listen to her review, listen closely when she talks about favorite childhood memories and try to recreate that for her, take car trips to promote conversation even if it’s just to a restaurant, being silent together on a walk can be good, save a probing question before bed, talk while doing chores, money for babysitters is money well spent.

Gifts: 12 days of gifts, photographs, now and later (like knitting or seeds), gift of a day (take a day off and do everything she wants to do), give her a complimentary gift to other gifts you give her like pens if she collects paper, give unexpected gifts, dont get upset while she shops for gifts, get friends she hasn’t heard from in awhile to send gifts for a birthday, get her a star, get homemade coupons for chores, offer a gift of your presence while she is having a very difficult time, hide a gift in her luggage, jewelry

Acts of service: do a chore she has given up thinking you will help with (surprise her with it), do what she asks without having her repeat herself, get up 30 min earlier or later for a week to plan and perform acts of service, do something she would never expect, make dinner and clean up, let her choose a service to pay to have done, think of frequent complaints and go overboard to prevent them from happening again (overstock toilet paper), make yourself accessible in times of excessive grief like death of a pet, dont always announce what you do and see how long it takes her to notice, if she’s always rushed find a way to save her a few minutes like let her use the bathroom first, get friends to help with something she wants that you can’t do on your own, if your wife enjoys what you do for her work together to do acts of service for others (also can be quality time), serve someone she loves, run interference for her while she watches her favorite show (take care of the kids)

Physical Touch: make touching a normal part of your routine (play with her hair, touch her shoulder as she is in the kitchen), kiss and embrace when coming and going, change your pattern sit in a new spot, sleep on the other side of the bed, sit in a different spot at a restaurant (next to each other or on opposite sides), find out where she likes to be touched on her body, try letting body message, recall the thrill of physical touch from when you started dating and try to recreate it, drive to a scenic place and put your arm around her, at picnics do the physical challenges, start a collection of songs about touch and play it to be reminded of her love language, message sore parts of her body, select tactile gifts, when she is sick touch her neck and temple or forehead, thank her with touch, when touching her dont speak, write messages on her back and see if she can guess it

Do a daily check on each other’s love tank. Ask on a scale of 1-10 how full are you? Then ask what can I do now to help fill it up.

To repair a damaged relationship: Tell your partner you have been thinking about your relationship and would like to do a better job of meeting their needs. What can I do to help make you feel more loved? Whether they give suggestions or not try to address their love language for 6 months. At the end of each month ask for feedback on how you’re doing and further suggestions. If she gives positive feedback with a week and then ask a request. If she doesn’t do it wait another month and try again.

As a guy, I felt this was a much better book than the original. It's arguable whether the original needed to be a precursor or not necessary. Explanations and examples specifically for men was more insightful for me. As opposed to knowing your own language of desired getting and giving bit also the critical need for being bilingual, knowing all about hers. I'll stop not to give spoilers of many 'ah-hahs' you'll experience.

This book is mostly fluff, which is a shame, because I think some of the core ideas are pretty valuable. Even taking a moment to think about the different ways that different people express and receive love is a useful exercise, and Chapman seems to be onto something with his five languages. I also thought that the chapter on apologies had some useful frameworks to think through.

Unfortunately the useful parts of this book could distilled down to 5-10 pages. The rest is hackneyed references to stereotyped male interests - weak sports analogies abound. My hypothesis here is that this is some publisher's failure rather than the author's. I actually wish I'd read the original work. I think what's happened is that it has been repackaged and re-written to find another way to sell the ideas, and in the process has been reduced to a bit of a self-help caricature.

It’s a good book if you have no exposure to The Five Love Languages material, but if you’ve read the other books then this one feels like a bit of a redundant cash crab. This one is theoretically specific to men, but I feel like men would be better off reading the generic book (although, to be fair, it’s been forever since I’ve read that one).

Last year, I read the original Five Love Languages book, and my wife and I found it to be a powerful tool for improving an already strong relationship. She has since read it herself, and I found myself curious as to how a men-specific version might differ. With little surprise, I found that the content is identical, yet the direction is indeed shifted slightly, with the stories told chosen to be able to relate better to a male reader. Upon a second reflection of the love languages, I find myself to be rethinking how my love languages affect my day to day life, and how I can continue to improve my wife's by keeping her's in mind. Reading these books over every once in a while as a reminder will likely be a very good thing for my marriage.

TL;DR This book should be titled: The 5 Love Languages for Sis-gendered Men in Hetero-normative Marriages Who Go to Church

Wait, now hear me out on why this actually matters with a book like this. I'm not virtue-signaling.. The author goes out of their way to unnecessarily focus the audience to a niche most associated with the Christian right. And it reads like a choice. For a book about effectively connecting emotionally to another, its audience, as indicated by the author's language, is shockingly narrow. Limited to hetero-normative sis churchgoing males who are only interested in the conventional marriage paradigm. Essentially excluding all LGBTQ+ individuals, as well as solos and friendships. At the end (last pages end) of the book they mention they have an edition for singles. But by then you have enough data to know that that book will focus on how to get the single married. Fun fact: more than 50% of people are single, and a majority of those have zero interest in marriage (but may have an interest in better relationships). Me.

Framing it within the framework of marriages (not even romantic partnerships) misses an enormous opportunity to reach a much broader audience, with a much broader application. Which is what makes its narrow focus feel very much like a choice. One that is typical of the Christian right that it brings to mind. An act of defiance. And this is recognized by me, a sis hetero male with zero interest in being 'politically correct'. It just seems to me that it would be valuable to an author trying to change the world with their nifty concept that inclusiveness would be much higher on the objectives list for their book. Apparently, they are only interested in changing the lives of 'certain' people. Which hangs over every page of this book, to a distracting degree.

Approaches to problem-solving in this book are also clunky and uninspired, distracting from what was sometimes a sound concept. It might come from the lack of creativity and openness that made the previous critique possible.

Also perplexing is that the chapter on understanding which of the love languages applies to 'my wife' is at the *end* of the book, rather than the beginning, preceding the in-depth for each. To my logic, it would make more sense to propose this divination process early so I can focus my attention on the languages that are deemed most relevant when we dive into the details. This oddity in short-sightedness happens again in that chapter; at the *end* he says "if you don't have time to read this whole chapter, the takeaway is...". At the end of the chapter... Brilliant.

The idea has merit. Like the MBTI, it's utterly unscientific with no basis in provable fact. Yet also like the MBTI, it could prove to be quite useful to a person trying to understand the world around them if used properly. It's just a shame how poor the execution is here. If nothing else, I'm inspired to seek out other authors who may attempt to approach this concept in a better way. Unfortunately, this series is big enough that they may blot out better voices on the topic.

I would argue that this book is just as good for women. I think because it gave practical ways to listen to love languages AND speak a love language, it's helped my understand all the love languages and how I speak them, and how I can ask my spouse for the things I need.

This is one of those books that while you are reading it you think to yourself "well of course" and "I knew that". Yet at the same time realizing that you've never really considering the ideas that Chapman presents about the way two people express and more importantly receive love from one another.

I pretty quickly discovered that my primary love language is definitely Words of Affirmation. Most men, and Chapman points this out often, assume they operate from the Physical Touch language but that is usually not the case. But what I enjoyed more than figure out my primary language was that it also allowed me to appreciate when the other languages are expressed to me that I would have otherwise not noticed.

I think every one should read this (or the original though I didn't think this edition was too focused on the male perspective) but especially those that are engaged or newly married such as myself.

[In English below] O livro é como uma terapia de casais portátil. É um livro muito prático. O autor explica as cinco linguagens do amor, explica como identificá-las em si e no seu cônjuge e como praticá-las de forma consistente para manter um relacionamento amor saudável e vivo. Definitivamente é um bom livro para qualquer casal que tem consciência de que a chama do amor já não é a mesma do início do relacionamento, mas que tem maturidade para entender que isso é muitas vezes a consequência de qualquer relacionamento e que pretende manter-se unido no longo prazo.

Agora, uma opinião pessoal, é de que o livro também me fez perceber que não há jeito certo de amar. A sociedade nos impõe uma forma correta de amar e ser amado. Dizem que se precisamos de palavras de afirmação somos carentes. Ou de que se precisamos de presentes, somos interesseiros... E na verdade, não há nada de errado com essas formas de se sentir amado ou de amar. Cada pessoa é única.

The book is like a portable couple therapy. It's a very practical book. The author elaborates on the 5 languages of love, explain how to identify them in yourself and in your spouse and how to practice them consistently in order to maintain a healthy and alive relationship. Definitely a good book for any couple aware that the flame of love is not the same that it was at the beginning, but that is mature enough to understand that most of the relationships functions this way.

A personal opinion: The book also made me realize that there is no right way to love. Society imposes a right way to love or to be loved. They say if we need words of affirmation, it's because we are needy. Or that if we need gifts, it's because we are self-seekers. And actually, there's nothing wrong with these ways of loving and being loved. Every person is unique.