How Many Love Languages Are There? Examining Chapman's Five Love Languages Using a Bottom-Up Approach

Chapman's Five Love Languages have been embraced by the public and incorporated into therapeutic practice, offering a simple framework for expressing and receiving love. However, it is unclear whether the proposed five love languages fully capture the multitude of ways that individuals express love. In three studies with individuals in long-term relationships residing in the United States (N = 696, 500, 499), we used a bottom-up approach to revise a previously developed measure of love languages using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Solutions ranging from 7 to 10 love languages provided superior fits to the data and better predicted relationship quality than the 5-factor solution. These findings suggest that Chapman's model may be overly narrow, and that expanding the framework could help therapists better understand clients' relational needs. By offering a more comprehensive vocabulary for loving behavior, this study lays the foundation for more effective interventions in relationship therapy.