I'm pretty sure Tommy and I read this book right after we got married, and I've thought about it a lot since then. A lot of times it helps me to realize that something is somebody expressing love in their love language, even if it's not something that I appreciate. But I didn't remember much of what he actually talked about, so I picked this up and read through it the other night after someone mentioned it in their talk at church (it only took about an hour and a half to get through this, because it's short and because I'd read it before/knew the main gist already). I think the main thing that is important about this book is the idea that people feel and express love to each other differently, and if you aren't sensitive to how your spouse feels love from you and you aren't expressing love to them how they feel it, they won't know how you feel. Chapman fills his book with stories of different couples who go from being completely unhappy to blissful just by realizing that they need to change how they express love to each other. I like this main idea, although I'm not totally sold on his claim that there are five main love languages. I feel like it's like personality tests that say there are four types of personalities--like, you're going to say EVERYBODY in the world feels love in one of five ways? The five languages (according to Chapman) are Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gift Giving, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Of course, there are lots of different ways to use the five languages (dialects, he says), but I still feel like the main benefit of this book is just understanding that main idea and then applying it to your partnership/family as it works.
As an aside, my love language is definitely Quality Time, closely followed by Acts of Service and Words of Affirmation. Physical Touch is pretty far behind, and Gift Giving is almost non-existent for me. It's funny to realize how much of a disparity there is for me between the different categories.
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