J. Parker
Many husbands report that their #1 love language is sex. Today, let’s talk about love languages, how sex fits into this framework, and whether your primary love language really is having sex with your wife.
What are the 5 love languages?
The Five Love Languages was published in 1992, which happens to be the same year I got hitched. Since then, this book sold over 12 million copies (three of which sit on my shelf, all gifts from various people), landed on the New York Times Bestseller list for 10 years, and currently ranks #1 in Amazon’s Marriage category.
Why is this book so wildly successful? In addition to being an easy and enjoyable read, many people related to its message and recommended it to others. Its principles resonate with many spouses and couples.
Generally speaking, author Gary Chapman proposed that our spouse may not feel or absorb our love because we’re speaking in a different “language.” He outlined five languages, or ways we understand love:
- Words of Affirmation
- Quality Time
- Receiving Gifts
- Acts of Service
- Physical Touch
While dating or courting, we tend to display all of these forms of love, but when the relationship settles a bit, we lean into the language we best speak and understand.
Why do love languages matter?
Imagine a couple where the wife speaks acts of service but her husband understands quality time. She believes she’s showing him love all the time by cooking, caring for the house, running errands, and offering to help him with projects, yet he feels unloved because she won’t go on walks with him, engage in long conversations, and take a vacation, just the two of them.
When our spouse doesn’t speak our love language, we can wrongfully conclude they don’t love us. But once we understand our differences, we begin to recognize our spouse’s actions within their own language as their way of showing love. We can also learn to speak our beloved’s love language.
For me, this insight was really helpful. You see, I came from a family where my mom waited on my dad in such a way that the relationship was imbalanced against her. My takeaway was that I would never be my husband’s personal servant! Then I married a guy whose #1 love language was—you guessed it—Acts of Service.
When I discovered that—and also reminded myself that Spock never demanded such acts from me—I realized there were plenty of nice things I could do that cost me little effort but made a big impact on his sense of being loved. Making him a cup of tea while I’m in the kitchen, folding his shirts the way he likes, and helping him find lost items weren’t burdens for me as much as opportunities to demonstrate the love I already felt.
In turn, he stepped up his Words of Affirmation. However, we were both already good at my #1 love language: Physical Touch.
Isn’t sex the language of Physical Touch?
Physical Touch as a love language is equated with sex for many husbands. But does sex really belong in that category?
In the love languages book, Chapman included it.
Physical touch is also a powerful vehicle for communicating marital love. Holding hands, kissing, embracing, and sexual intercourse are all ways of communicating emotional love to one’s spouse.
The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
However, Chapman has also talked about times when sex—as much as it’s desired and appreciated—isn’t the love language of Physical Touch.
One husband told me that he discovered his love language by simply following the process of elimination. He knew that Receiving Gifts was not his language so that left only four. He asked himself, “If I had to give up one of the four, which one would I give up first?” His answer was Quality Time. “Of the three remaining, if I had to give up another, which one would I give up?” He concluded that apart from sexual intercourse, he could give up Physical Touch. He could get along without the pats and hugs and holding hands.
https://www.5lovelanguages.com/faqs/love-languages/
Not to contradict a well-credentialed Ph.D. and NYT bestselling author, I don’t agree as much with the statement from Chapman’s book as the example on the FAQ page of his website. Even though there’s touching involved in sex, if that touching isn’t the part that really stirs your soul—not your loins, guys, but your soul—then maybe Physical Touch isn’t your love language.
So is sex your language?
A fair number of husbands have told me their primary love language is sex. They report feeling most connected to their wives through sexual intimacy or explain how sex sates a longing for loving acceptance.
I understand that, but you may be mislabeling what’s going on. So why would it feel like sex is your love language if it’s not?
You’re not getting enough.
I’m not a foodie, at all. If survival hunger pangs weren’t an issue, I’d cook and eat maybe twice a week. But they are issues, and my body regularly signals me to get food. If I go too long without food, the signals become more intense and persistent. Eventually, food is the primary thing on my mind.
Is food the most important thing to me? Only when I don’t get enough of it. And if someone hands starving me a taco, I feel loved, or at least sated. In that moment, “have a taco” speaks volumes to me.
Likewise, if you’re starving for sex, it can feel like that’s your primary language. But as the example from Chapman’s website addressed, try imagining your sexual longings being met. What would emerge as the most important way of speaking love to you?
Your sex drive is physically felt.
Sex, like eating food, has a biological component. That is, God created us sexual beings with an instinctual desire to mate, the ability to experience and enjoy physical arousal and orgasm, and an internal reward system that biologically and emotionally incentivizes us to repeat a satisfying sexual experience. (“As often as possible,” several readers mumble.)
Not surprisingly, then, we may be even more aware of our longing for sex than the more nebulous love language of something like Quality Time or Receiving Gifts. Might you be identifying sex as your love language since it’s a more physically felt desire?
You enjoy sex most for the language it speaks to you.
Here’s the theory I’ve had for a long time: Sexual intimacy is multilingual.
That is, sex isn’t its own love language, nor it is necessarily Physical Touch. Rather, sex has the capacity to speak any and all of the five love languages. Sexual intimacy involves touch, but it can also be seen as a gift, involves acts of service, calls for quality time, and can evoke words of affirmation.
(I challenge you to go through Song of Songs and find each of the five love languages. They’re there, if you look for them!)
You may believe sex itself is the love language, but it’s really what sexual intimacy with your wife conveys to you—which love language you hear.
Sexual intimacy can be fluent.
Sexual intimacy at its best speaks multiple love languages. But you may be drawn in particular to one love language within the sexual experience.
This is likely one reason why sex itself isn’t enough. When engaging with someone we deeply love and desire, it’s not just sex but what the experience conveys—as addressed in this survey question of husbands:
Imagine that your wife offers all the sex that you want, but does it reluctantly or simply to accommodate your sexual needs. Will you be sexually satisfied?
For Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn
Not surprisingly, 74% of husbands said they would not be sexually satisfied with sex alone. It needed to mean something. Part of that meaning, at least, could be how sex taps into your primary language.
What you desire or fantasize about might give you a clue about which love language you’d most like to experience during lovemaking. Do you long for her to verbalize her longing for you or say how much she’s enjoying the experience? Maybe you’re a Words of Affirmation guy. Do you thrill at the idea of serving her sexually and bringing her to a gleeful climax? Maybe you’re an Acts of Service guy.
Knowing your own love language can you help you ask for what’s most meaningful in your marriage and during sex. You may discover your sexual hunger is more thoroughly sated once your emotional love language needs are met in the bedroom.
Speak your wife’s love language.
But it’s not all about you, of course. You may be able to improve your wife’s experience and desire for sex by speaking her love language.
First, it’s important to speak her love language outside the bedroom! That’s the groundwork for a secure and intimate relationship from which to build quality sexual intimacy.
But here are some examples of what it might look like to speak your wife’s love language inside the bedroom:
- Words of Affirmation. Complimenting your wife’s appearance and value to you, using romantic lines to initiate sex, speaking up during sex to encourage, praise her, and express your love.
- Quality Time. Slowing down the encounter to spend more time together, playing a bedroom game, engaging in afterglow conversation.
- Receiving Gifts. Setting the mood with low lights and pleasing scents, presenting your wife with lingerie she would like, creating an intimacy playlist for you two to enjoy.
- Acts of Service. Preparing a bubble bath for her to ready herself, taking care of the birth control, using a prop (anything from a feather to a marital aid) to stimulate her.
- Physical Touch. Initiating sex with soft and inviting touches, massaging her as part of foreplay, cuddling after lovemaking.
Now this list isn’t a manual. Just because your wife’s love language is Acts of Service doesn’t mean she wants to do the examples I gave. They are examples, and as we’ve said about 1.2 million times in this ministry already, you have to adapt what you learn to your wife because she is a beautiful and unique person.
But hopefully, mulling through how the love languages apply to both you and your wife in the bedroom can help you pursue better and deeper intimacy in your marriage.
