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You know your spouse’s love language, and you try to use it. So why is their love tank always running on empty?
This week, we’re expanding the classic framework to include personality nuances, seasonal shifts, overdoing it (yes, that’s possible!), and love tank “leaks.” Plus, you’ll learn why gifts aren’t always about money and why physical touch isn’t always about sex.
Join us for a conversation about moving past formulas and becoming a better student of the one you love.
Juli (00:02.232)
Hey friend. Welcome to another episode of Java with Juli. I’m your host, Juli Slattery, and this podcast is an outreach of Authentic Intimacy, which is a ministry that helps people make sense of God and sexuality. Well, I’d say unless you’ve successfully dodged every book club, marriage conference, and Instagram quiz, you’ve probably heard of the five love languages and you probably know your own. And if you’re married, you might know your spouse’s too.
But let me ask you, have you ever felt like you’re trying so hard to love your spouse or a child or a friend and it’s just not landing? I know what that feels like. Today I’m joined by Doctors, Les and Leslie Parrott. They are relationship experts, longtime friends, and they’re collaborators with Dr. Gary Chapman on a fresh take on how to implement the five love languages. And in this conversation, Les and Leslie are going to share how they discovered–first in their own relationship that it wasn’t just about speaking the right love language–but there’s also nuance and personality and what they call love leaks that were playing into this communication dynamic. And that’s when they reached out to Dr. Gary Chapman and said, Hey, I think we need to take this a step further. Together, the Parrotts and Dr. Chapman have written a new book called The Love Language That Matters Most.
And you will also hear Les talk about a new premium assessment that you could take right now. And if you need a refresher on the five love languages, Dr. Chapman was on this podcast in January and we’ll link to that episode in our show notes. Hey, this is one of those conversations that doesn’t just give you information. It really gives you something to try like right now. So let’s head to the coffee shop with doctors, Les and Leslie Parrott.
Juli (01:53.922)
Well, Les and Leslie, feel like it’s been a while since we’ve done this. I think I interviewed you several years ago, but it’s great to catch up with you.
Les (02:02.094)
Well, as I recall, last time we interviewed, you interviewed us rather, you said that we had given so much content, would be years before we would have to be interviewed again, because it was so good the last time.
Leslie (02:13.762)
That’s how you recall it.
Les
That’s what I remember, yeah.
Juli (02:16.524)
Yeah, I think that’s probably fair or that you’re just so busy out there writing and speaking that it’s hard to get on your calendar.
Les (02:24.782)
You just said we covered everything that anyone could possibly need to know about relationships. You said, don’t think we ever have to do this again. But here we are.
Juli (02:33.902)
I know, so we’ll just reference that conversation and we’ll be done. How’s that sound? Perfect
Les (02:39.202)
Perfect.
Leslie (02:40.814)
We’re always glad for a chance to connect with a dear friend who’s in this with us over the years.
Juli (02:48.382)
Yeah, it is always fun. And here just really what’s on your heart, what you all have been doing. I know that you’re always developing something, always refining messages. And this time around, you’ve partnered with Dr. Gary Chapman to help him flesh out even more that groundbreaking concept that he had many years ago, the five love languages.
And I just love to know how did this new book and collaboration come about where you’re like, hey, I think we can do something more with this?
Les (03:20.974)
Well, it’s been a long time baking in the oven. That is for sure. This wasn’t just a quick kind of thing that happened. It’s been a journey. We’ve known Gary for literally since that book came out, what? Well over 20 years ago, the we call it the Purple Book. You know, the five love languages, which, by the way, has sold 20 million copies. Truly one of the best selling books of all time, marriage or otherwise an incredible thing. But before I answer that question fully.
If you don’t mind, I want to give all of our viewers and listeners a free little gift. Can I do that?
Juli (03:56.054)
Yeah, 100%. Yes, we love free gifts.
Les (03:59.906)
It’s related to what we’re talking about tangentially because it’s all about love. But if people want to go to myheartchart.com, no strings attached, answer a few questions in four minutes, they will get a very cool little experience on the state of their relationship. Most of the time in relationships, we’re talking about traits.
I’m an introvert, I’m an extrovert, I’m an ENTJ, I’m a… you know, on Strength-Finder, I’m a, you know, whatever, they’re all traits. And so, but this is about the state of a relationship, which is very fluid, it changes. And the state of your relationship today is not how it’s gonna be a year from now, and it’s not how it was a year ago. So this little tool, myheartchart.com, totally free, absolutely no strings attached. In four, three or four minutes, you can answer a few questions and go through this really fun experience and get a dozen pages, a little free report, myheartchart.com.
Leslie (05:00.66)
Yeah, it’s like knowing the current vibe of your relationship, which is super helpful. What I love about it is you can do it just on your own. This isn’t something that requires you to be with your spouse, the person you’re in a relationship with.
Les
Yeah, you don’t have to answer it together.
Leslie
You can answer it on your own just to get deep insight and understanding of where you’re at. You can share it. You can invite them to, but you can also use it just as your own guide. Yeah.
Les (05:26.37)
So this is just it’s brand new and it’s did I mention it was free?
Juli (05:32.046)
You did mention that. No strings attached.
Les (05:35.82)
Yeah. so anyway, we’re excited to let people know about it. OK. But now back to your question, how did this happen with Dr. Chapman? Like I said, we’ve been friends a long time, but there was this experience that I had with five love just personally in our own relationship where I was thinking, I don’t understand it. I am definitely speaking Leslie’s love language, which is words of affirmation. And so much so, I felt like I was a walking hallmark card of encouragement to her. And she just was coming back going, my love tank is not full. And I can tell you’re working at it, but something’s off. And so, I mean, how many people get to do this? He’s a friend. So I called Gary and I just said, Hey, what’s happening here? And the more we talked about it, the more we realized, there was a missing piece to the five love languages or not necessarily a missing piece, but a next step to the five languages.
Les
And that had to do with dialects. And we began talking about different dialects. And by the way, I discovered Leslie’s we’ll talk more about that. And it was not encouragement, even though that’s a classic, you know..
Leslie (06:48.566)
…Form of affirmation. Yeah. Yeah. But something gets lost in translation a lot of the times, even when we’re earnestly trying to love in that language.
Les (06:58.808)
So to make this long story longer, in how this happened with Gary, we eventually said, hey, maybe we could tease that out a little bit. And so we started by developing an assessment, a five love premium assessment, which has now been out for about a year. And it’s had an awful lot of people go through this thing. This is not the free little quiz that just tells you what your love language is. This is a, a full-blown premium assessment that gives you about 15 or more pages on all of this that we’ll be talking about. So we started there with Gary. And then the more we got into it, the more we realized it would probably be helpful for people to have a book about all of this. And so we wrote this book together called The Love Language That Matters Most.
I’ll never forget, I had the manuscript on a table at a restaurant and here in Seattle where we live. And the server came up and she saw the title on the page that was sitting there, the love language that matters most. And she just said, what is it? And I said, what’s what? She said, the love language that matters most. And I said, well, what do you think it is? And she said, I think it’s gifts. That’s my love language. That’s the one that matters most. And everybody does tend to think that theirs is the one that matters.
Leslie (08:20.66)
Sure, rocks our world.
Les
Not the case.
Leslie
No, as a matter of fact, of course, when you stop to think about it, the love language that matters most is the language of the one you’re trying to love, the person in front of you. And that’s our heart. I mean, that was always Gary’s intention behind the five love languages to equip us to love well. But something about, you know, the human spirit, we tend to stop a little bit after we personalized it to us and instead of reversing that and using it to love well.
Les
Right
Juli (08:56.206)
Yeah, well thanks for sharing that. You know, I think the beauty of the five love languages is it’s such a simple concept and anyone can take a little quiz or have a little conversation and figure out, oh, I know what mine is. But like you said, the one that matters most is knowing what your spouse’s is or your children’s might be. But there’s sometimes a negative to something that feels simple, because as you were describing Les, you you’re like, this is easy. All I need to do is encourage Leslie. But you take a simple concept and it’s important to keep growing and understanding the application and complexity of it, which is what you all have written about and are sharing today. And I have found in my marriage, we’ve been married for almost 32 years.
We just had a conflict about like a month ago. And you know, we’re…we’re going through the whole conflict cycle that you go through. And when it came down to it was all about love languages again. Like I had really missed my husband’s love language. And I’m like, man, I’ve known this concept for so long. But sometimes we get so familiar with
Les
What is his love language?
Juli
His love language. He really has two strong ones. One is words of affirmation and the other one is quality time. And they both are very important to him. And I wasn’t hitting on either of them. Like I, that’s really where he was hurting.
Juli (10:23.438)
And when we’re hurting because we’re not feeling loved, it comes out in all different forms of conflict. But when it got down to it, I’m like, yes, it’s going back to the basics that we’ve heard over and over and over again. But you forget to continue to apply it and continue to learn, as you’re saying, the nuance of specifically, how do we love well?
Les (10:44.204)
And Juli, what’s your love language?
Juli (10:46.887)
My love language would probably be, and I feel like it shifted over time
Les (10:52.228)
Oh now when you’re starting with the word “probably”, that means you need to take the five love language premium assessment.
Juli (11:01.1)
I did.
Les
Yeah, there should be no guessing or assuming.
Juli (11:05.24)
I have taken it. Yeah, I know. I took it probably a year ago and some of aging is I don’t remember, but my love language has always been quality time, but I’m also an introvert. And so it’s complicated, which probably gets into the dialects. And then I think over the years it’s also become acts of service because I just always feel like I never have enough time to do things. And so when my husband takes something off my plate, like that’s become more more meaningful.
Leslie
Yeah
Les (11:40.768)
Let me take this opportunity to just interject something that was really important to Dr. Chapman when we began developing the assessment, the premium assessment for five love and then this new book, the love language that matters most. He said, the number one question I get when I speak is how do personalities shape the five love languages? And you just said a second ago, Juli, oh, I’m an introvert.
And for listeners that don’t know, I’m a clinical psychologist, Leslie’s a marriage and family therapist. And so one of the things that we did was bring in the elements of personality. You mentioned introversion and extroversion. Well, that makes a big difference on how you receive love and experience love. Just take, for example, words of affirmation. If you’re an extrovert, the best way to express words of affirmation to an extrovert is in front of other people. Have a party, tell them in front of everybody, bring them up to the front of the church, affirm them, give them a plaque, you know. An introvert? Uh-uh, they’re going, can we just do this one-on-one? We don’t need to make a thing out of this. I still love hearing it. I just don’t need to hear it in front of everybody else. So you get the idea, right? Personality. Yeah, personality is a big part of this as well, not just dialects.
Leslie (12:59.02)
Yeah, I so big and I love that you recognize that about yourself. I also love that you recognized that even with the simplicity of love languages, we have our own nuances. Your husband has two fairly primary love languages, and maybe one of those is your foreign language. You don’t, wouldn’t lean into it unless it was important to him. And you were saying acts of services become more and more important to you in this season, which you know, love languages, there’s something about them, unlike personality that’s deep and mostly unchanging, love languages can change in a season. I mean, there’s so many layers to loving well, even when you get this simple concept firmly in mind.
Juli (13:49.782)
Yeah, absolutely. And you really do flesh that out well in the book. Even you talk about this language is going to be especially important during these kinds of seasons for each love language, you know, like in a season of grief. How does that language change what’s going to hit the mark the most? Another thing that you write about in the book that I think I would love for you to share about is how you can actually overdo a love language. You know, like, Les, you had shared when you knew Leslie’s love language was words of affirmation. You’re just like a walking greeting card. I think we’re always thinking more is better. Why is more not always better?
Les (14:35.598)
Well, it’s especially not better when your dialect is off, right? Which was my case. And I was giving all kinds of encouragement to Leslie, so much so that she was starting to feel pressured by it. She’s thinking, boy, he must have some expectation that I’m supposed to do something that I just mentioned in passing or something.
Leslie (14:55.276)
Yeah, because you would tell me any opportunity that passed by, believe in you, you would be amazing at this. And I would just think what I would rather have is a compliment about something I’ve actually already done that you, you know, delighted in because the encouragement made me feel like it wasn’t good enough, actually, if I didn’t want to do that thing.
Les (15:17.1)
You know, and so just so our listeners know, there’s three dialects to words of affirmation. One is encouragement and some people really move and groove on that. That’s they want to hear.
Leslie (15:28.608)
Energizes them.
Les
Another is compliments what you mentioned and that’s your primary dialect is compliments. And then there’s appreciation. People just want to know they’re appreciated. All those fall into the bucket of words of affirmation and they’re all good, but if you’re overdoing one, which is not their dialect, that’s how it can kind of backfire on you like it did with me and Leslie.
Leslie (15:53.088)
And I do love that you brought up that nuance that if you just lock in on a formula, that isn’t a powerful way to speak a love language. You really need to tune in because maybe I’m in a season where I do need to try something brave. So encouragement would be helpful to me. And I think to your point where you can overdo it on a love language, if you think it’s only compliments, and this is written in stone, rather than looking at them, studying their nuances, knowing them in the moment, you know, and really authentically loving. That’s what matters.
Les (16:33.92)
Well, and it’s when you do anything, even though it’s good too much, it loses its saliency and then it starts to feel a little bit hollow. It’s just a reflex, right? It’s not something that’s coming from the heart. So anything like that can feel, start to feel a little bit hollow if it’s just overdone.
Leslie (16:51.704)
I wanted to go back to something you said though, I thought was so profound. Here you are just sharing, we’ve been married 32 years, I think you said. We had a conflict this last month when we got just peeled away the layers at the heart of it was, his love tank was empty. You didn’t use those words, but that metaphor works. And it is powerful that there’s this synergy whenever our tanks are low, we just don’t have a lot of reserves to be actively cooperative and loving and conflict does emerge. There’s such a synergistic thing when someone’s tank is full, that kind of splashes over and becomes contagious for each of you in the relationship. And there’s this deep sense of goodwill and trust. And you just, you easily handle more stressful things.
So there is a power in that. And how insightful that you tuned into that, because the thing about love jinks is once we pay attention, we can make a difference so fast. It’s like a shortcut to their heart.
Juli (18:01.242)
Yeah, you’re very kind. I’m kind of like, why did it take me so long to figure that out? So you’re very kind. But I do think there’s this tension between knowing that this kind of tool is sort of a cheat code in marriage. Like, all I need to do if my spouse loves gifts is make sure I get him or her gifts and I’m good. I know one situation where a guy, all he thinks about is if there’s a conflict, I need to, I need to get my wife a gift to make her feel better. And yes, that’s sort of a cheat code, but sometimes those cheat codes, as you’re saying, can keep us from doing that harder work of empathy, listening, really showing specific love to our spouse, which again is what this book and your assessment is calling us to those deeper places of not just the cheat code, but continuing to be a student of our relationship and of those that we love, which again is sort of a tension there, which I appreciate.
Leslie (19:05.602)
Yep.
Les (19:06.498)
You know you mentioned gifts as something, and you know all of these can be sources of manipulation Right. I know when I can affirm Leslie when it’s not really from the heart and she loves affirmation So I know I can do that. But there I just want to underscore it all has to be done from a genuine heart is something like I made her mad so I better go buy her a gift, right? And so that genuineness and by the way when it comes to dialects, even if gifts is not your love language, and it’s the lowest love language. Fewer people have gifts as their love language of the five. But if it is your love language, it’s really important. You want a tangible representation of your partner’s love. But when we were devising this and we were thinking about the and researching that the ways that we experience gifts, we realized for everybody, gifts are a part of culture, right? We have gifts for birthdays and Christmas and anniversaries and all kinds of things. You’re gonna give and receive gifts multiple times this year.
Leslie (20:12.558)
As an expression of love.
Les
Every year, yeah. And so it’s really important to understand even if neither of you have gifts as a primary love language to understand how gifts are experienced. And so when we were developing this, just to give a quick idea of how these…
Leslie (20:29.709)
How the dialects.
Les (20:31.758)
How the dialects work. I’ll ask you Juli when you get a gift. Would you prefer the gift be heartfelt or practical? Which from your husband which would be most valuable to you a gift that’s heartfelt or a gift that is practical? There’s no right or wrong answer.
Juli (20:45.838)
Probably heartfelt. Yeah, I’d say probably heartfelt.
Les (20:52.25)
Then the second question of the two is, would you rather have gifts that are extravagant or relatively simple?
Juli (21:01.784)
Simple. Yeah, I don’t like to spend money. Yeah.
Les (21:06.51)
So with those two questions, it doesn’t mean this is always the case, but it generally means that your husband can really hit the mark on gifts by giving you something sentimental, a sentimental gift, right? Cause if it’s heartfelt and it’s simple, that’s what it is. If it’s heartfelt and extravagant, then you like fancy gifts. I want a spa day, not a poem that you wrote for me, right? So you get the idea.
I say you’ll never give a bad gift again because you’re now going to understand how that person experiences gifts of love.
Leslie (21:41.228)
Well, and of course, what I love is when you take the assessment or even are considering these concepts and reading the book, you’re thinking about all your relationships, right? We think about our own boys. One of them loves a practical gift. The other one doesn’t want a practical thing ever. It’s all sentimental. Right. Right. You know, and so it helps you to love in all your relationships wisely.
Juli (22:06.7)
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I’m just thinking about the people in my life because it’s stressful to try to pick out gifts for everybody and get it right. so you could spend the money on the assessment and save money from a lot of gifts that end up going to Goodwill.
Les (22:24.366)
That’s right. Spend 30 bucks on the assessments, save $100 on the extravagant gift that you don’t need to get.
Juli (22:29.208)
There you go, I love it.
Les (22:52.928)
I have a quick story of a guy that he was like, her gifts, know, her love language is gifts. And he was, we don’t have money. I can’t go to Tiffany and buy her jewelry every, you know, six months or whatever. And I remember I talked to Dr. Chapman about this. He had a similar story. This guy was out on a hike by himself near their house and he came back, and he had a little twig, a little twig that he found on the path and he gave it to his wife and she said, what is this about? Why are you giving me? He said, I know it sounds kind of silly, but I’m just giving you this twig because when I was, carried it for a while on the hike and the more I carried it in the palm of my hand, I just realized how fragile I sometimes feel and I’m kind of like this little fragile twig. But when you’re holding me, I don’t feel that at all.
Well, boom, that was it, right? She started weeping and he told me this story and it had happened years earlier, three or four years earlier. I said, where’s the twig today? He says it’s in the kitchen on her desk. It’s in a little kind of plate that she has there. And think about that. It was a tangible representation of his love. Didn’t cost a dime. It was a literal twig. That’s the value when somebody speaks this love language of gifts to find that tangible representation changes everything.
Juli (23:54.478)
Boy, I think that’s a great story. Thanks for sharing it. And those kinds of stories help us apply this to real life.
One love language and the dialects I’d love for you to dive into is physical touch. You know, at our ministry, we talk an awful lot about intimacy, about sexuality. And I think there’s sort of the misnomer that a lot of people feel like if your love language is physical touch, that always means sex, or if you desire sex in marriage that means your love language is physical touch. So can you help tease that out a little bit?
Leslie (24:31.256)
This is such a fun one because you’re right. I mean, that’s sort of the stereotype. It’s, you know, must be romantic touch is the thing. But honestly, yeah sensual touch, but honestly, there’s so many kinds. There’s so many dialects. In fact, more dialects when it comes to physical touch than any of the other languages.
Les (24:52.866)
There’s five love languages, but 22 dialects total. And the most of any dialect, I mean of any love language, the most dialects falls into touch. There’s so many different kinds of touch, but I want to clarify something because it is true. People that don’t take the assessment and just hear the love languages, a lot of guys will say, I know my mind’s touch because you’re right. They do equate it to physical intimacy, to sex. And I always ask them, if they’re just assessing it on their own with reflection and not really doing the assessment, I’ll say, let me ask you a question about physical touch. If you and your wife drive to the grocery store and you get out and you walk from your parking space to the front door of that grocery store, do you reach out and hold her hand? No, I don’t do that. Not since we’ve been dating. I don’t do that anymore, right? Well, then physical touch is not your love language, okay? Because this is not just about sex, right? And there’s plenty of people that don’t have physical touch as their love language that still enjoy lots of sex, okay? So let’s make that really clear.
But getting back to the dialects, yeah, there’s seven of them. And fact, on the report, what it does on the assessment is actually give you the order. It gives you the priority of your dialect of physical touch.
Leslie (26:17.388)
Yeah, and it’s so fun because there’s so many different kinds. I love the couple that we were explaining this to and playful touch is one of the dialects. You know, just that fun kind of playful touch. And her husband had somehow interpreted her need for playful touch.
Les (26:35.534)
It was the last on her list of the seven dialects. It was at the bottom. But he thought, well, I love tickling her. I’m going to just tickle her. That’s physical touch. And it was really getting under her skin to turn a phrase. And it was something that was making her kind of a little nutty. And he said, would you stop? She said, would you stop doing that? And he said, I’m speaking your love language. I’m tickling you. She said, yeah, that’s not my dialect, all right. Yeah. My dialect is comforting touch. Right. And playful touch, not so much.
Leslie (27:12.618)
I mean, and some people love it. That’s totally connected to them. But there’s so many, you know, there’s restorative touch where, you know, it might be a foot massage or just something that conveys comfort and care. There’s affectionate touch. There’s even protective touch where someone comes alongside of you and make sure that you’re out of harm’s way, you know.
Les (27:37.144)
There’s expressive touch. It’s just like high five. I mean, it’s just like, you know, I want to have some just for that person that has just expressive, just walking by them and just like there’s certain people like even in a meeting, because, you know, these apply to all relationships, not just marriage relationships. But how do you express physical touch in the workplace? That’s very dicey. Right. Call H.R. right away. You know, right. But there’s some people, it’s just like men, they want to high five or you walk by them in the meeting as you get in your seat and you just tap them on the shoulder a little bit. There’s something about, hey, you recognize me. You saw me, right? If physical touches their thing for other people, it’s like, you know, what are you doing? Right. But, this is such a sensitive one and such an important one. And that’s why there’s so many dialects within it.
Juli (28:25.014)
Yeah, yeah. A lot of your work and even the application of this as we’ve talked about is around marriage. The reality though is that about 50 % of adults in America are single. And I think it’s more difficult to tease out like, okay, what do I do with these love languages if I don’t have a partner who can take this assessment with me and work on my love language?
What advice do you have for singles who just, feel like their love tank is always empty because there’s not one person who is sort of in the place of living with them and working on filling that love tank.
Les (29:05.848)
Yeah, well, two things. One, I wanna recommend what I was giving away at the top of our talk here today, and that is the heart chart, because the heart chart is for singles too, and it really help you pinpoint where am I at in just the state of feeling connected to people in my life as a single person. That’s really important. And so we look at the dimensions of wellbeing and connection. And that awareness, know, we psychologists love to say awareness is curative. Once you become aware of something, then you can start to do something about it. That’s why assessing the state of your relationships is so valuable. So that’s the beginning place, right?
Leslie (29:46.06)
That’s right. And the second thing is if you’re single and you don’t have anyone actively seeking to understand and love you, you can identify your love language and you can honor that yourself. I mean, we had the sweetest conversation with a single gal who said, you know, my love language is gifts. And so I honor myself. If there’s an occasion in my life, I’ll think of something symbolic and, you know, make it a point to choose a symbolic gift.
Les (30:15.97)
Right. “I came by myself flowers”.
Juli (30:19.246)
Well, that’s very true. And I think also just in community having that conversation, we had like we have a group of friends and love languages came up and one of them just shared, my love language is gifts. And I thought, okay, like this is my friend. I have to remember that. And I think in community having this conversation in terms of how do we care for each other well as friends, this isn’t just a romance thing.
Like this is a human flourishing conversation. Something you can talk about around the dinner table or as you go out with your friends or extended family, because there are an awful lot of people in the world today and in our churches who are really, really lonely and they don’t know how all this applies to them.
Leslie
Right.
Les (31:07.276)
Well, and just so you know, Gary gave us actually it didn’t even start with Gary. It was before Gary, but he really amplified it. This whole metaphor of the love tank and the love tank is still applicable if you’re whoever you are as a teenager, doesn’t have any romantic life, whoever a single person that’s in their fifties. It’s always good to kind of have some self-awareness. And if your love tank isn’t full, where can you find that connection in your life with somebody that can help you fill that? You know, the love tank, one of the things we did in this new book, The Love Language That Matters Most, is to really shed more light on this metaphor of the love tank. We can’t x-ray, it’s not an actual thing, we can’t see that in somebody, it’s just a metaphor, but it sure works well. But one thing that we started to realize in our research is that there can be a love leak in your love tank.
It might be the result of your history. It might be the result of some woundedness. It might be some attachment issues, whatever. But some of us have love leaks.
Leslie (32:11.244)
some trauma triggers or as the case may be.
Les (32:15.326)
Even when you’re being showered with love. I’m thinking of a person right now that we worked with and she is definitely surrounded with a lot of love, but she’s not feeling it. She can’t trust it. She’s got a major love leak in her love tank.
Leslie (32:28.332)
And not only that, but love tanks are not one size fits all because we all have our own story, the family that created us and shaped our story and our way of knowing love. We have personality. There’s lots of different dynamics.
Les (32:43.318)
If you have a large love tank, you know, you can hold that love a lot longer. You can go a long distance. Wasn’t it? I think it was Mark Twain that said I can live for months on a good compliment. He had a big love tank, right? Other people have a little tiny love tank and they need to hear it more often. so understanding that’s valuable. But yes, personality too.
Leslie (33:05.006)
That’s right. And of course, there are some things that are classic creators of the love leak. We know from like John Gottman’s work, there’s the magic ratio because a critical comment can spring a love leak pretty quick.
Les (33:18.572)
Yeah. Yeah. And it takes five positive interactions to make up for one negative interaction. That’s the magic ratio. And I’m so conscious of this in my own marriage. When I say something that I know is not landing well with Leslie, I think to myself, OK, I got five. I got to make it up now. It’s like, you know, I wear that Oura ring that a lot of us wear now that kind of assesses your sleep.
I always joke with Leslie. I like to wake up and see how I failed at sleep in the morning. But one of the things it measures is sleep debt, sleep debt, right? And so if you go a couple nights on four hours in a row, your sleep debt begins to accumulate. You can’t just make that up with one nine hour night. It’s going to take a little while to earn that debt, you know, drive that debt down in the same way with our negative kind of comments or criticisms in a relationship.
It takes a while to work off that debt. And it’s not just like, I said another one. So the scales are balanced. We know from research, like you said, Dr. Gottman’s research, it takes five, think about that five positive interactions to make up for one negative one. So our love tanks drain way faster than they fill up.
Leslie (34:32.525)
Yeah. Well, what I love about this whole concept is the focus is not on perfection. We’re never going to speak the love language fluently every time of the person we’re trying to love, but it’s all about the practice of it, and just stay in that practice and continue to love because that is where the power is.
Les (34:58.634)
Right. Right. And don’t feel, don’t beat yourself up. Don’t feel guilty if you’re not speaking the other person’s love language with, you know, a perfect dialect instantly, even after reading the book, taking the premium assessment, you’re still going to fail. we wrote the book and we still fail, but you keep trying and you keep practicing.
Juli (35:18.862)
It’s a great tool and I’m thankful that you guys put in the work and the research to create it. And I have a feeling knowing you two, the next time I have you on the podcast, you will have developed something like an oura ring that shows you the status of your love tank. So I can’t wait to see that.
Les (35:35.758)
It’s in the works, it’s in the works. Next interview.
Juli (35:47.064)
Well, a lot of fun and wisdom packed into one conversation and I hope it sparks some meaningful conversations for you and your significant other. Well, go back and listen to this again together. That might be a great next step. Because the goal here isn’t to master some kind of formula, it’s actually to stay curious about the person that’s right in front of you. And it’s never too late to learn how to love the people in your life better.
We’ll link to the love language that matters most and the premium assessment that Les mentioned in our show notes. As always, you can find more resources to help you build stronger relationships like blogs, videos, and our new hot topic kits at authenticintimacy.com. Thanks for listening and I look forward to having coffee with you next time on The next Java with Juli.