Love, we’re told, has a language.
Or five of them, if you’re familiar with The Five Love Languages—words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, physical touch, and receiving gifts. For years, the framework has helped people understand why one person feels loved by a long conversation, while another feels it most deeply when someone shows up and fixes a broken shelf.
But what if love doesn’t stop at five?
What if love, like people themselves, evolves across cultures, generations, and lived experience—finding expression in ways we don’t always recognize as love at first glance?
When Love Looks Different Than Expected
Across families and cultures, love often arrives quietly.
In many Filipino households, love is packed into lunchboxes, folded into laundry, or sent through remittances wired home every month. It shows up as “Kumain ka na ba?” instead of “I love you.” It is practical, consistent, and rarely announced.
Older generations, shaped by scarcity or survival, may express love through provision and protection rather than verbal affection. Younger generations, raised in a more emotionally expressive world, may crave affirmation, presence, and validation.
Neither is wrong. They’re simply speaking different dialects of the same feeling.
Perhaps it has always been a living language—shaped by where we come from, how we were raised, and what we’ve had to survive. It shifts with time, adapts across generations, and finds its way through gestures we don’t always name.
When we begin to notice love in its many forms, we don’t just feel more loved—we become more generous with love ourselves.
And that, in its own quiet way, is a kind of wellness.
So, instead of asking, “Do they love me the way I want?”
should we consider, “How might they already be loving me?”
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What Science Is Beginning to Say About Love
Recent psychological research suggests that love may be more flexible—and more contextual—than fixed categories imply. A 2023 review published in Perspectives on Psychological Science argues that while the five love languages are intuitively appealing, people don’t consistently fall into neat boxes. Instead, expressions of love shift depending on culture, relationship type, life stage, and circumstance.
In other words:
love adapts.
A caregiver may express love through vigilance.
Parents may express it through discipline.
And a friend may express it by remembering the small details.
Love is not only how we prefer to receive it—but how we have learned to give it.
Love Languages You Might Not Have Named
Beyond the familiar five, researchers and sociologists increasingly recognize other expressions of love that don’t always get labeled:
- Presence – sitting quietly with someone, without fixing or filling the silence
- Reliability – being consistently there, especially when it’s inconvenient
- Respect – listening without dismissing, honoring boundaries
- Shared responsibility – carrying emotional or mental load together
- Care through structure – routines, reminders, and planning for safety
These forms of love are especially visible across generations, where affection may be shown through concern, structure, or sacrifice rather than overt tenderness.
Across Cultures, Love Learns New Shapes
Cultural context matters deeply. In collectivist societies, love often prioritizes harmony, duty, and family cohesion. In more individualist cultures, love emphasizes emotional expression and personal fulfillment.
Neither approach is more “loving.” They simply reflect different social values.
Understanding this can soften long-standing misunderstandings:
Why a parent shows care through advice rather than hugs.
Why a partner expresses devotion through acts rather than words.
Why a grandparent equates love with provision, not praise.
Love, Like Wellness, Is Not One-Size-Fits-All
At Joyful Wellness, we often say that health is personal. Love is no different.
Just as bodies respond differently to rest, movement, and nourishment, hearts respond differently to affection. What matters is not forcing one language to dominate, but learning to listen for love where it already exists—and expanding how we express it ourselves.
Perhaps love is less about identifying the right language, and more about becoming multilingual.
So maybe the real question isn’t What is my love language?
Maybe it’s How many am I willing to learn?
Love doesn’t lose meaning when it changes shape. It gains range. It gains depth. And sometimes, it surprises us by showing up exactly where we weren’t looking.
Like any good language, love becomes richer the more fluently we speak—and listen.
A Joyful Discovery
So, instead of asking, “Do they love me the way I want?”
should we consider, “How might they already be loving me?”
That shift alone can change relationships—not by lowering standards, but by widening understanding.
Love, after all, has survived centuries, borders, and generations because it knows how to adapt.
And like wellness, it thrives best when we stay curious.
Joyful Wellness Reflection
If love can be expressed in more ways than we once imagined, then perhaps we’re more loved than we realize.
A meal prepared. A call remembered. A silence respected. A promise kept.
Seen this way, love isn’t scarce—it’s everywhere, waiting to be recognized.
Love doesn’t always arrive in familiar packaging.
Sometimes, it asks us to learn a new language.
And maybe the most joyful discovery of all is this:
we don’t need to wait for love to arrive differently—we can begin by noticing how it already exists.
Photo by Cassie Lopez on Unsplash
References:
- Chapman, G. The Five Love Languages. Northfield Publishing.
- Bohns, V. K., et al. (2023). Rethinking the Five Love Languages. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
- Decide to Commit. Love Is a Language: Rethinking the Five Love Languages with New Research.
- Cross-cultural psychology literature on collectivism and emotional expression.
