The story of cover: A photo I shot at Barangaroo after work.

After finishing this book, the biggest takeaway wasn’t learning the concept of five love languages — that’s a quick web search away — but rather starting to seriously examine myself: how do I actually express love? And how do I feel loved? These are two questions I had never carefully thought about before.

Words of Affirmation

Loving others is the quickest way to receive love.

This resonated with me. I don’t have to wait for someone else to like me first before I like them. I can take the initiative to show goodwill, even through actions.

But the book also distinguishes one thing: the willingness to love and the ability to love are two different things. Ability needs to be developed through continuous practice in relationships. If I don’t get positive feedback, withdrawing my surplus emotions is fine — I haven’t done anything wrong. This realization was important to me — I used to feel that giving should always come with a response, but it doesn’t.

The book offers a few directions:

1. Start with yourself
2. Turn passive into active — do things or say words for the benefit of the other person
3. Devise strategies for loving and expressing love
4. Answer gently, which disperses anger
5. Forgiveness: what can I do to make up for the hurt I’ve caused you?

The best way to deal with past failures is to let them become history.

Don’t let someone else’s past behaviour ruin your today.

I consider myself somewhat good at using words of affirmation, though I feel awkward when others affirm me — unless I agree with what they say. I need to pay attention to my own tone, express more affirmation to others, express disagreement gently, sincerely apologise for my own mistakes, and not let others’ mistakes affect my life.

Receiving Gifts

Gifts should not be treated as compensation or tools for making amends. They are concrete symbols of love.

Mentally, giving gifts should not be about expecting something in return — it should be unconditional.

Everyone loves talking about things they are interested in. As long as you are willing to listen carefully, you can gain many clues.

This gave me an idea: listening carefully reveals clues for gift-giving. What’s your relationship with the recipient? How many preferences have they revealed to you? These determine what to give. You can only give — whether the other person accepts it is their business.

The one who benefits the most from spending money on gifts for others is still yourself.

If the other person’s love language is receiving gifts, buying them gifts is the best investment. But the point isn’t the gift itself — it’s the intention behind it. You don’t give because someone keeps begging, and the gift itself has to be appropriate.

I’m not good at this love language. I can barely remember the last time I gave someone a gift. But I did receive one just last month.

Why can’t I give? Two reasons: first, I don’t know what to give — the more important the relationship, the harder it gets. Second, I’m conservative with spending. Generally, I’m happy to receive gifts, but it depends more on who gave it (is it the person I was hoping for?) and what it is (is it something I like?). Most of the time, though, I don’t expect to receive gifts.

Acts of Service

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Taking the initiative to do something within your ability for someone is also love. For example, before going to someone’s place, ask if they need you to bring anything.

It’s better to ask before taking action.

Avoid having your actions misinterpreted — if I clean someone’s bathtub, they might think I’m implying they’re dirty.

I think my father expresses love through acts of service, and my mother through words of affirmation. But I’m not comfortable using acts of service myself. I feel like I lack the ability to read situations and can’t accurately provide the service the other person wants, even though I might be enthusiastic.

In the past three months, I haven’t helped my parents with any acts of service. But I did chat with a colleague and treat him to a meal to help him through a tough time; recently I also listened to my housemate talk about her relationship story. Do these count as acts of service? If someone expresses love to me through actions, I can feel it at a 5-to-7 level. I can’t serve people I care about, but I can serve myself — maybe.

Quality Time

Quality time doesn’t mean staring at each other or locking eyes. Sometimes it’s doing an activity you both enjoy. The activity itself isn’t the most important thing — it’s just a means to create intimacy.

Quality time is more about devoted companionship. Doing something together:

• Listening with full attention
• Quality conversation — keeping the chat going, showing curiosity about the other person
• Quality activities — doing something one or both of you enjoy. What matters isn’t what you do, but the shared experience

The book also covers how to be an empathetic listener: look at the person when they speak, don’t do other things, listen for their feelings, observe body language, don’t interrupt, ask questions to confirm your understanding, validate their emotions (when someone talks to you, they’re usually looking for emotional relief rather than solutions), and ask how you can help. These are things I definitely need to practice.

Physical Touch

Perhaps it’s because we dare not let others know we like being touched, worried about being misunderstood, so we continue to stay lonely.

Not being willing to come close to your body is essentially drawing a line in terms of emotion.

When I read these two lines, I paused — it felt like they were describing me. My sense of shame is too strong, which has led me to never initiate physical contact with any member of the opposite sex. The only time was when a girl invited me for a hug.

The purpose of love is to create happiness for the other person, not to satisfy personal desire. Learning to speak the other person’s love language is what truly loving them means.

Physical intimacy doesn’t need to be liberated — rather, it needs to be confined to the most appropriate and effective domain. Decades of research show that this domain is a one-man-one-woman, lifelong marriage.

The book also cites statistics: the divorce rate for couples who lived together before marriage far exceeds those who didn’t, in some cases up to 100% higher. The quality, stability, and harmony of cohabiting couples’ relationships all fall short of married couples. We should pursue a deeper sexual relationship. Physical intimacy is private and should be shared with someone I deeply love.

There’s timing to physical touch too: avoid touch when angry; moments of achievement are good opportunities; so are moments of disappointment or low mood.

The Test Results Surprised Me

Before taking the test, I thought my love languages were quality time and words of affirmation — but they had to be ones I identified with. Here’s what came out:

Physical touch scored the highest, which was completely different from what I expected. Thinking about it, maybe it’s because I lack physical touch so much that I resonated strongly with the related descriptions in the test — not because I get a lot of it, but because I crave it.

How to find your own love language: how you treat others (the way you treat others is often how you want to be treated), notice what you demand of others, listen to your complaints, imagine your ideal partner.

To discover someone else’s love language: observe their expressions, complaints, and requests; ask questions (e.g., how should I express gratitude to you?); or experiment directly using different love languages and see their response.

Relationship with Parents

The relationship with parents is special — it affects how you handle interpersonal relationships. Even if the relationship is far from good, there’s always room for repair — though I don’t have major rifts with my parents.

You can keep track of the love languages of important people in your life: name, primary love language, how I can express love to them.

Dating and Relationships

The book mentions pure purposes for dating:

1. Getting to know the opposite sex and learning to interact with them
2. Learning to view the other person as a whole person, not an object
3. Maturing yourself
4. Creating opportunities to serve others — initiative, not subservience; this is the ability to love

In fact, the more similar two people’s traits are, the fewer conflicts. But when it comes to major issues like values, morals, life planning, and having children, the differences become especially apparent. Pre-marital dating allows both sides to get to know each other and makes their differences especially obvious, helping decide whether they’re suitable for marriage.

Think more about how things will feel after the honeymoon phase. I hope to have a long-term, suitable partner and relationship. A lasting marriage requires more than just the feeling of happiness.

Considering a happy marriage as the most important or very important goal.

Marriage doesn’t necessarily have to achieve companionship, sex, love, children, social acceptance, financial considerations, or security.

The highest purpose of marriage is for a man and a woman to achieve the deepest union in every area of life, thereby bringing the greatest satisfaction.

My understanding of this quote: the outcome of marriage isn’t what matters — the process is. The experience of mutual connection, understanding, helping each other, and living together is the greatest satisfaction.

The book also discusses unity across several dimensions:

Intellectual unity: What books, videos, and media are you both consuming? Can you have meaningful discussions on the same topics? What’s your education level? Simply put, is there soil for mutual growth?

Social unity: You don’t need high social overlap. You can develop shared hobbies, but stay open to trying new things. Social growth should start before marriage, not be left for after — things probably won’t change much after marriage.

Emotional unity:

• Being loved: feeling that the other person genuinely cares about you
• Being respected: feeling that your future partner values you (your intelligence, ability, personality)
• Being appreciated: feeling that the other person values your contributions to the relationship

The person you choose after careful selection is the first step toward a lasting, happy marriage.

Love and Success

People who know how to express love have a greater chance of success. Loving others contributes to career success.

The principle is simple: stop wasting time thinking about whether you love your neighbour, just do it. After doing so, you’ll discover a big secret. When you express love through your actions, you’ll find that you immediately love that person. Conversely, hurting someone you dislike makes you dislike them even more. Being kind to them reduces the feeling of aversion.

Love is not a feeling but an action. Actions bring out feelings, so loving actions bring out loving feelings.

After reading this book, I have a more concrete framework for understanding how to love. I used to think expressing love was something that happened naturally, but now I realise it’s more like a language that needs practice. At least next time, I’ll know to express love in the language the other person understands.