Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - It’s More Than a Love Language: Communication Beyond Categories

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

In this episode, we unzip the idea of love languages—where it came from, why it resonates with so many people, and where it falls short.We take a closer look at The 5 Love Languages, introduced by Gary Chapman, exploring both its appeal and its limitations. We talk about how the framework can offer couples a shared vocabulary, encourage self-reflection, and open the door to more intentional conversations about care and connection. At the same time, we examine the lack of scientific grounding behind the concept and the ways it can oversimplify complex emotional and relational needs.We also discuss how turning intimacy into quizzes, categories, or checklists can miss the point of real relationships—where needs shift over time, communication is ongoing, and understanding requires adaptability, not labels. From the Platinum Rule (doing unto others as they would like done unto them) to the realities of neurodivergence, aging, illness, and changing capacities for things like touch, we explore why no single framework can fully capture how humans give and receive love.This conversation isn’t about throwing love languages out entirely—it’s about putting them in their place. As a starting point, not a rulebook. A tool, not a truth. And always secondary to curiosity, listening, and the willingness to keep learning your partner—again and again.If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to explore the questions you've always been curious about, but don't always feel comfortable asking out loud. No judgment, no shame, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. Before we get started, I do want to remind everyone that we have partnered with JackandJillAdult.com, one of the top online adult stores. And because you're here with us, you get 20% off with code UNZIPPING20. So go check them out. So now that I've got that out of the way, today, we are unzipping love languages. If you're watching, you've seen Dr. Sue drop her head on her microphone. But I mean, I knew this was coming.

but yeah uh before we unzip love languages dr sue would you like to share a little bit about yourself with our listeners sure so and i think this is really important for our conversation that i give my actual educational background because that's going to be part of the conversation yeah so i have a bachelor's degree in health education i was actually certified to teach k-12 for hopman in new york state like i was going to be a teacher and then i went to i went to master's program and got a degree in health education you see that health education path and then for my phd i decided i wanted to specialize and so i have a phd in human sexuality education um i do the professor thing i write the textbooks co-write the textbooks i teach i

research i speak places i love how i can talk i can boil all that down to like four verbs but then in my spare time i i think it's really important that we have conversations about things like this like things that are topical and things that if you even if you had fantastic sex education which puts you in the vast minority in this country it probably stopped in high school and so now if you're in your 20s your 30s your 40s and you know you're reading things like i mean the love languages aren't new but when things come out like people don't have places to discuss it and so i try to continue sex education for folks as long as they want to listen so um i do work in the community i'll basically talk to anyone who wants me to come out and talk about

sex and sometimes that's youth groups sometimes it's youth and parents which is always amusing for me um and sometimes it's folks in their 70s and 80s so and everyone in between um because i think we all need to keep learning about this stuff because things change yeah that's enough of an intro and that's me um but now you need to to meet a little more than just the introduction that we had to the show from charlie so for those of you who do and do not know charlie charlie is our curious co-host who's always ready to explore just the ins and outs of all this stuff that is i don't i mean i have to say taboo because it's in the title but i also want i i don't want to say controversial at challenging. We'll say challenging, um, around all the things that we

talk about with sex and sexuality and relationships and love and everything, but you should tell us more. I don't know what more I can add to that. You can always find more. Um, I am Charlie. I am all those things Dr. Sue said and more. Um, I am someone who, who does in, uh, I have, I have just always felt comfortable challenging notions and things that are expected of me and expected of others, especially as a woman in society, messages that were given, conditioning that were taught. A lot of our longtime listeners will know that that's a term I use a lot, social conditioning and unpacking it and I think my kind of gateway into waking up a little bit was my first communications class in college and just digging into comms 101 and and having an

understanding that if if you you've got to dig deeper to understand what you're what you're consuming the messages we're consuming and um and consumption just means how we're taking in everything, all, all the stimuli that, that we encounter throughout the day. Um, so understanding that, um, and just always, it's always nice to, to meet with Dr. Sue and have these conversations. Um, we've been friends for many years and, and having these conversations in an open, honest way, having these types of conversations where we're not trying to convince but rather just daylight some different ways of looking at at different issues i'm waiting for the day goes from running to us but that's okay especially surrounding the taboo

the unnecessarily taboo topic of sex and sex sex health yeah i just say i'm waiting for the many to become many many years like i'm waiting for that i don't know when that qualifies yeah we'll have to determine what what integer that is all right so dr c what's your love language oh god my love language is shut the hell up i mean that would track that's brooklyn i don't even remember why i mean i know we put this in like our list of things to do and i think it came up somewhere at some point but i don't i don't remember what it was that triggered us to do this yeah i don't remember yeah if anyone out there remembers because people anyone out there remembers from our one-on-one no i'm pretty sure it came up in an episode i don't know whatever

we're doing love languages today where we're talking about love languages today um and i don't want to say why i hate them because i don't think they're all bad but i think they can be problematic should we talk about what they are i have them written down for the because some people may not know what i mean that book came out like 20 30 years ago so some people may be who like they they've heard the term love language but they don't actually know that it was like a book um so the book i have them written down i did come prep today i don't usually write things down um acts of service receiving gifts quality time words of affirmation and physical touch you're not gonna give me much today are you

those those are the five love languages that were named um and yeah so the idea behind the love languages it was a book that was written by his last name is chapman it was a um i want to a gary it is gary there we go it was a book that was written by gary chapman it it did come out do you happen to have the year it came out right in front of you because i don't know i don't but i can okay you'll do that while i talk about the book um so the idea was that you there were quizzes and you could take the quiz and you could figure out it did believe um that you had a primary love language which is the primary way that someone could communicate with you or do things in your relationship to make you feel loved and i do believe i have to admit i never read the book

someone gave it to me i started reading it someone borrowed it and never gave it back and i don't think i cared enough to track it down um but i have heard excerpts over the years and i revisited um some of the stuff that you can find online that's straight from the book and so the idea is that you have a primary love language but also that you may have a secondary love language uh so it came out in 1992 oh i have to math that's 33 years ago 34 so i was i was kind of i said 20 30 years ago and it was updated in 2015 oh i didn't know about the update okay so for yeah so that may be in our consciousness but for some of our listeners that may have come out before you were born so um but yeah that's the idea and the idea was that you kind of look at what it is

that you would want from a partner as a way that they could communicate that they or show you because it wasn't always about communication in a verbal perspective um how you know that they love you at least that's what it was supposed to be and yeah and how you love them right yes i we take the quiz i tell you my love language or two and you tell me your love language too and then everything is solved now it was never as basic as that um but that's kind of how people were boiling it down like people would just take the quiz and be like oh this is my love language mm-hmm yeah and so what are some of the challenges with something like this because i know one thing is that it was built off of his experience as a pastor and a marriage

counselor which he doesn't i believe have a certification as okay i was gonna say that marriage counselor if you heard some hesitation in my in me saying that is i'm assuming it was within the framework of his church yes he was doing from what i remember from reading bios he was doing counseling which is pretty common i mean i know people for pastors yeah yeah to go back to their church for for counseling for their couples um so i do think it's important to talk about his background because as the academic in me and the academic in me does not usually itch things the academic part like part of me was itching at this um so he has a bachelor's degree i wrote all this down i was so prepped for this one he's a bachelor's degree in anthropology

a master's degree in religious education and a phd in adult education so there is no counseling background not to say that people don't finish you know a buttload of degrees and then go yep i'm gonna do something else um because he was doing counseling and he was working with couples in his role as a religious advisor, but I think it's important to keep in mind that this is not based on any kind of scientific work.

This is based off who he was seeing, which is a very selected group. I'm guessing they were all straight or straight-appearing or in a heteronormative relationship structure. I'm sure a lot of them subscribe to pretty traditional

gender stereotypes. and so his experience was going to be limited from that so and that's why it was so important to me that I give my background like I have a PhD in human sexuality education it's why I feel comfortable doing this it's why I feel comfortable teaching classes in this I have a doctorate but if you ask me anything about like biomechanics I'm just going to stare blankly at you and maybe blink a lot because I don't have a degree in that I and I think it's and I think we've talked about this before probably one of the foundational episodes we did at the beginning that part of my frustration with the field of sexology or sex education is people like oh yeah like i have a

degree in something like something i mean always i have a degree in business but i'm a certified sex health educator yeah and and i mean you can get certified if you go through the process um but like people will be like yeah i have a degree in like something that's adjacent and i'm like how is math adjacent to like so i do think it's important that we're owning when people see credentials i think it's important for us to dig into those credentials a little bit yeah so for the academic in me i was a little itchy and then it got a little worse because there's nothing here except his own anecdotes and experiences and again those are valid but they're not quantified they weren't quantifiable they weren't studied they didn't go through any kind of rigorous like can

we prove this um the folks i always think of are the gotmans they run the gotman institute like they do a lot of research on on relationships they have the the horseman of it's the horseman of the apocalypse was like the horseman of the relationship apocalypse but they will like bring couples in and give them surveys and hook them up to machines and watch how their heart races as they talk about experiences like there is legit research in what we're doing and what they're doing excuse me i'm not affiliated with them so so while some people are like oh well these like relationships can you really study them and the answer is you can you can actually do research on this and there is none that was done on the love languages when he put it out i'm sure there

are people who have done research using that as a basis but there's no research to support him when he put it out so that was like the academic like yeah that that didn't sit right with me you're making faces and I don't know what that means no that's okay I'm smiling at what you're saying about how it didn't sit right with you um and then I also looked up the Gottman Institute oh yeah yeah they do great I mean they will literally hook you up they will study the living daylights out of you and your partner they will hook you up to machines they'll measure your breathing rate and like there's like hardcore science there yeah um yeah sorry I was just getting distracted by I was gonna go on a whole thing about the

horseman of the relationship but that's that's not what this one's about no it's not so from the academic perspective and it wasn't meant to be an academic book it was meant to be a pop culture book and it and it was and it succeeded and it was coming out around the same time that we were seeing things like men are from mars and women are from venus and it's not like it's not like we were seeing people question the heteronormative conversation on a larger scale which is happening a lot more now in a much bigger way which i'm really excited about because we learn differently when we acknowledge different perspectives so i do want to acknowledge that at the time it was coming out it wasn't like it was out of left field that it was oh very heteronormative and

very gender stereotyped like that's what we were doing back in the 90s it's very heteronormative and in the math in the pop culture so so one of one of the things though that so that's that's why this made dr sue itch twitch itchy twitchy itchy twitchy and and full disclosure for me as well i haven't read it i've engaged with it in that kind of like astrology quiz kind of way but not not letting it necessarily define how i'm looking at myself and doing self-reflection and and work um so I think so I want to pivot a little bit if I may to some of the ways that this was helpful I was just about to ask you do we want to start with the positives or negatives so because I'm sure we do have listeners that were

like that book was a game changer for me that theory that what he presented was a game changer for me and it's really helped me and it's helped me teach my kids all of these things um so and in in one of the ways that i think it was helpful was providing some kind of common language to use that two people could go to and have the same set of standards for self-evaluation evaluation evaluating the relationship etc yeah um i think that it was really helpful and people realizing that their relationship may have been struggling but not because they weren't a good fit they just weren't communicating the same way or they weren't demonstrating i don't even want to say demonstrating because that sounds showy they weren't they weren't doing things for their

partner the way their partner wanted it to be done i don't know why i didn't like that phrasing just go with it folks the way the way maybe the way that their partner was hoping to have that interaction or yeah or demonstration of love or something along those lines and I think it was a really good way of being like okay well this works for me but now I understand why it's not working for my partner and it's not that our relationship is essentially flawed you know could have been like oh well this relationship sucks it's not the right one no no it could have been the right one you just you needed to kind of take a look at it and realize that we're just communicating differently and I actually think that people who are in relationships who grew up in different

cultures or different parts of the world or different religious backgrounds I think they actually do better at that naturally because they already know there's a difference like if that's a great point yeah if I'm coming from from Brooklyn and I'm in a relationship with someone from the Midwest like we definitely there's definitely a difference in values of being polite unicorn yeah um but like i feel like we would know that going into it and be like oh yeah okay this is this is a culture thing or um again people coming from listen different cultural ethnic backgrounds you kind of already know there's going to be differences i think for people like i don't understand like why are we not getting along we're we're such a great fit we have all the

same characteristics we have the same background this may have been why you may have had the complete same background but you still wanted something different and so i thought i think it was good for shedding light on that like two more good things I think two one two I don't know hold on I'm thinking let me sorry let me do you want to chime in I'm all over the I had all these notes and now there's just yeah I mean I that to me for this episode I don't want to diminish the impact that it had for many people and that it became part of the zeitgeist it became a part of popular culture and it is it is those moments and those things that are introduced to us that when we can all say okay this resonates with me on some level so i we now have a common language to

to use to talk to each other and to be vulnerable yeah um it i think it gave in in its kind of first generation, it gave space for that vulnerability of self-reflection and reflecting on the partnership. And then listening, I think, was the other part that it helped. It helped to say, okay, well, this is what resonates with me, and I find out something different resonates with you. Now I need to be curious, and I need to be present and listen to what that is. yeah so i think that's i i think that there's a good impact there yeah but it becomes popular so but i want you to get to your two i wrote them down so we're good now three however many number of positive things before we go into how it evolved well and what you were

saying i mean that's my answer to everything right it's all about communication that's that's the easy button in life if we could just keep communication don't be a dick yeah actually i do someone made me uh an easy button that you just push it and it says communication so i have that now thank you um so so i think anything that promotes communication is going to be helpful in a relationship whether it's especially if it resonates with you right yeah like if you find the thing that resonates with you and then you find another person that that resonates with you've got something in common and you've got like i like i've been saying that common language and that common communication common vocabulary surrounding something that can be really tough

yeah and i think for something like this like the ideal for me if a couple were using this book to help them out or not yeah just to help them out assuming it wasn't a library book that needed to be returned i would love the book to be marked up like like people starring and like no like highlighting in different colors be like this this made sense to me and like oh i never thought of that and like using that as a communication tool but yeah i think that's great for any kind of self-help book for relationships when people use it as an actual physical like aid this is what i've been trying to say words and i didn't know them yeah um i think you touched on the other thing one of the things which was the vulnerability piece like the ability to really do that

introspection and be like what do i like do i do i like that that's hard to do and i think kudos to any system that gets you to sit there and be like huh why don't i like it when my partner brings me flowers why do i want to kill them when they decide that they you know i'm trying to look at the things again sorry you know when when they're when they're like doing doing chores for me instead of spending time with me you know if if i didn't get it before yeah that takes a lot of thought and there's a lot of vulnerability in that and there's a lot of introspection and i think that's also really important and you brought that up so thank you for that yeah and the third thing that i love is that it has become part of our lexicon um i have a friend who likes to cook and she will

joke that cooking is her love language and before that book i may have been like what is a love language now i'm like oh this is how you show me love and so that's great thank you and i've heard like the most random things like yeah yeah this is my love language or like bad joke me sending you every meme i can find is a is my love language you know but we all know what that means now and i think we didn't have that commonality before and for those of us who remember the book coming out it's it feels like it's always been part of our language um so yeah so i think it gives us a way to communicate things and i love that people are pushing past the five and being like no like sending you every bad dad joke i can find that's

my love language and beyond and in their relationships in their life beyond romantic relationships yeah because sometimes some of your strongest longest relationships are with your close friends yeah and we are human and we change and we evolve and so if you met in college or high school you've been friends since high school or college um and you've been friends for 20 30 years you are not the same people because of lived experience in those 20 to 30 years and they're you're not wholly different you may be but there are little tweaks here and there and preferences change and communication styles change cadence changes and so I think that's the other benefit it is that this has expanded people looking at their key relationships in their life and if

they're upset with them or not satisfied with the friendship or or the sibling relationship or what have you this has also given language to that yeah the opportunity to apply it to those those non-romantic relationships but i think you also just hit on like some of the biggest drawbacks of this thing. Like how I did that transition? Yeah, that was really good. Thank you. Do we have anything else positive to add? I do. And I've talked about this somewhere. I think I've done this on another episode. I know I've had this conversation in my own personal life very recently. A lot of us were brought up with the golden rule, right? Do you run to others as you would have done unto your son what did i miss that to you thank you i missed the last word which

is the important one and i know that for me and especially when i talk to students and when i talk to family and when i talk to some of my friends like i we've been moving over the years i can't even give you when i started using this it's got to be about five years now uh the platinum rule and the platinum rule is do unto others as they would like done unto themselves and i think we talked about this with the shovelry episode sorry i think i just said that backwards i'm gonna say that again because i was already thinking so the platinum rule is do unto others as they would like done that means i need to know what you want and i think there's value in seeing it that way now this isn't going to happen on the street right like you're not

going to hold the door open and be like oh is this gesture going to be what they want i'm not talking about those casual interactions but if if i just do something for someone because It's how I would want to end a fight or start a relationship or communicate. And they're like, no, like that's a big problem. And so I think that the evolution, I think the theory behind this, though he didn't name it, is the platinum rule, which I think is better for intimate relationships, whether it's with a partner or your friends or family. What do they want? And the way I think about this is a lot. I have a friend who I think despises, this is actually a strong enough word, surprises.

She hates surprises. Absolutely hates them. And her partner loves them and tried to throw her a surprise party. And it went down. Yep. It went down like a lead balloon. It went down exactly as you think it went down. And there was a good, you know, I wasn't in the middle of their fights, but she was telling

me a lot about it afterwards and she's like it's just it just showed that he didn't know me and his feeling is like but this is what i would want and i'm like that's that's the thing that's the golden rule you need to think about what the person wants and sort of think anything that enables us to step back and be like okay i am doing for someone else what do they want right that's a powerful thing and it didn't get named that way in the book but i think that's the underlying thing and i think that's a really strong idea yeah that couple is still together by the way I feel like I need to say that like they did survive that there has never been another surprise party for her for her or for him I think ah yeah I think they both got scared off of it

yeah like I think about that with proposals you know I have friends who and we've talked about this before as well like I have friends who are like if someone ever proposed to me and did it in public I'm walking away and the other person's like I'm gonna see this big show and it's gonna to be fantastic and it's really thinking about what does the other person want and if it's someone that you're trying to be in a in a relationship with it feels like that should be important right yeah all right on to the bad on on on to how it i i would say maybe not uh yeah troublesome the challenges with it so i think part of the problem if you just read the book and again i have not read the full original i've definitely read some excerpts

of it and i did not read anything from the 2015 call out but i know a lot of the examples that was given were very heteronormative and so it may not feel safe for folks who aren't in that situation and a lot of what came out in the original book in 92 was really based on the gender stereotypes so like a lot of men are of course gonna want more physical touch yeah um and so i think that anything that promotes those stereotypes can be harmful and the lack of inclusive inclusivity is harmful and so i think if you're just reading the book without maybe thinking beyond that it can be a problem and some people do like this is the one thing they read and they take the quiz and that's it we would like people's minds to be opened so yeah i think it's

that for me it's that um that simplification and then the iterations and the adoption of it in the pop in pop culture and and society um there's that that piece of this is this is meant to be a gateway not the the by the relationship bible yeah this is one tool to get you to understand how what one what your needs are and two how to communicate what your needs are and how to listen to what your partner's needs are yeah to me that i i would like to believe that was the the overall intent of this book but when when something like this catches on it does wind up becoming um a simple i didn't realize it disappeared sorry yeah you were teleporting um um but what what winds up happening is then you have like these also these offshoots

right and I joked a little bit ago about like an astrology quiz then you have these offshoots of these quizzes based loosely based off of the love languages disguising themselves as something that is very based in the love language book and and that simplification sometime for some can signal okay I did the work I read the book I finished the book I did the work and took the quiz it's not working so it's not me because I did the work yeah yeah and I and and that's and that's where it it starts to become problematic yeah and I think it's also we you had talked about this I want you to finish talking about it now you we were talking about this in the pre-show the idea of like well I did the thing you wanted oh yeah yeah so so if you're in a relationship and you're doing this

you're you've you've hit some kind of patch that you want to fix and or you come into this relationship and you say oh like you both know the love languages and you share oh this is my love language and as the relationship evolves and maybe some disconnect happens or someone's checking out of the relationship there can be a way to use that that love languages as kind of manipulation of like, well, they're always doing they, they always do these things that I like, so they must still be in it. When really, I'm just doing it to keep you hooked, because maybe I'm lazy. And I just don't want it to end. Because then I have to, then I have to do work and I have to move and I have to all these things. So it can become something that is a static, like checklist

thing. And then the person says, you know what, this isn't working for me anymore. And that person that was just kind of phoning it in i'll say well well then weaponize it so well i was doing all these things that you wanted yeah i spoke your love language yep oh yeah yes to all of that i had written it down because i had the same thought before we even met up today um it was like this idea of of doing the token gesture well like you like gifts so yeah i was a dick all week but here's your gift like it doesn't erase all the other things that happens um it it's the start of it's not the end all be all it's the start of and and i think one of the really big problems because i've heard people say this they'll be like my my life language is this it's it's it's

a relationship yeah you you don't just get to be like this is my love language it's not about they have to you know they have to suddenly be like oh okay that's how i'm gonna do all my communication or all my all my ways of showing i love you it has to go both ways and so you may have to become fluent in someone else's language if your language is keep looking at the notes if your language is acts of service and there's this quality time you're gonna have to learn how to do quality time you don't get an well it's not my love language learn a new language you have to learn how to do this in a two-way relationship setting and i think for some folks it was just like oh well you you need to figure out how to make me happy but I don't have to do the other

way around no no everyone's gonna learn that's that's the other thing too to add on to this and in a little bit of a different way is you you may I I feel like a we are whole people we are holistic people. And so the other way of simple, having this simplified to five things gives an implication that really only one or two apply to you. Yeah. Really resonate with you when there is, and I, I don't know, cause I just learned about the Cotman's today. Um, Thank you, Dr. Sue. But I would venture to say that the most fulfilling, healthy relationships over time have a combination. If we were to look at these five languages, there's a combination of those happening constantly in the relationship for and from the two people in the relationship.

it yeah i mean i don't want to i don't want to break the gotman's work down into like a single thing but i always joke that a lot of it's about don't be a dick um which works perfectly for us it's really about like when you are nasty to each other that's like yeah it's about respect and respect is built into the five like languages but it's not named as a love language like respecting me as a human you could be like yeah i got you a gift but that's not respecting me as a person like yeah you check the box but where's that respect for me as a person yeah we are we are way more nuanced than just than just one yeah one check box yeah and I think that's the thing for me with it is that uh that I that I never really engaged with reading the book or anything like

that because to me it was but sometimes sometimes I want something done for me sometimes I just want to sit on the couch together sometimes sometimes I don't want to be touched yeah we were talking you know yeah exactly we were joking about that before like there you know let's say that my love language is physical touch and I've had a really really bad day and you're gonna touch me I'll be like don't fucking touch me like yeah the last thing I want right now is human contact I want to be angry I want to throw things in a safe way not hurting people in a rage room right yeah like I want to and and that's the thing we don't always respond to the same thing all the time and then as our bodies change if if over time I'm getting older or I've had an injury or an

illness that means that I'm not feeling touch the same way or experiencing touch the same way where touch may have grown great before now it doesn't it doesn't work for me anymore and so I think that's the other thing to keep in mind like as a relation and you talked a little bit about this as we grow and as our bodies change and as our experiences change we we may find that that thing doesn't work for us anymore we maybe we never thought we needed acts of service but now we're sick and we need someone to take care of us in a way that we never thought we'd need or maybe i'm looking at the list again maybe maybe the gifts were a thing but now you know maybe resources are tight and maybe gifts can still happen like a handmade gift or something small um but maybe now

it's more about feeling like i'm not physically alone maybe i didn't love physical touch before but now the world is scary and i don't know what's going on and and and sometimes someone just wants that skin hunger fed but they never thought physical touch was their thing so yeah yeah so So that's the thing for me is that if it's been looked at as the Bible, the relationship Bible, so to speak, rather than one of many tools, then you start to limit your fulfillment, being able to seek fulfillment. because that's what this boils down to if someone is reaching out to a resource like this there is there are unmet needs and all of us are just looking for a fulfilled life and fulfilled relationships and wanting to bring fulfillment to the people that we care about that's what this all boils down to yeah and i think that's the other thing is that the where we get it from

other people if if I go through if I go through my love languages the most obvious cheat sheet ever as I just looked at and I've decided that my physical love language is touch that may be great for my partner not so great with my friends and family like so so realizing that we have these different relationships that we may value and it may be I'm just gonna pick one randomly let's say access service is really important to me for my partner but words of affirmation are really important to me for my friends or maybe not using words i know i joked about this sometimes in certain situations with family me shutting my mouth is the biggest biggest love i love you um but i think that's the other thing is that we are these really complex humans who have

multiple relationships and as you said sometimes they are longer lasting than our romantic relationships and that's when you and i get to the many many years of friendship many many many many many many um that it changes with the people we're around and it changes over time oh sorry i just had another one oh it's not really exciting for some folks who are um who are neurodivergent they may view touch very differently on very different days and very different stress levels yeah i never i didn't yeah so there's that as well yeah um so yeah if we think about some of the some of the folks who yeah some some folks may may be like well this worked for me on monday but not on tuesday and now my partner's really confused because i

told them that touch was my love language um so yeah sorry i wanted to make sure i got that in that's okay i like it so i really i think that's what this boils down to and the itchy twitchy is that it is it there's a cream for that Yeah, that's a different episode. But it's just that when some, as I've said, when something like this latches on to the public consciousness in the way that it has for the past 30, almost 35 years now, it can become reductive because then people always point to the list and always point to the book when really the, to use it, in my opinion, to use it effectively, you have to see it as one

of many tools. And it is, um, it is a framework that gives you an invitation to self-evaluate, um, to explore, be open and curious about what your partner's needs are or anyone in your, anyone near and dear to you um it's it's really that invitation yeah to to heal to find words to find to to just make that relationship or uh richer but it's not the only thing yeah it is a component and or and whatever it shouldn't be used once in a long-term relationship no like you were saying you know if two people met in high school or college or whatever maybe or it's been 20 years i would love if people are like this thing really helped me it helped us at the beginning of relationship i'd love to see people like just checking in for 10 15 20 years they may find

that what what they think is important has changed um so yeah i think it can be a good tool if this is the tool if this is the quiz you're gonna take if this is the book you're gonna read because it feel safe to you maybe it matches your religious beliefs um it's something you've heard of and you're gonna give it a go give it a go i'm not telling anyone not to do it just just realize that there's there's some drawbacks to it um but again i think anything that can make us more aware of what we need and better able to communicate it because it's all about communication yeah that's going to be a that's going to be a tool in the toolbox and receive and receive that communication as well right it's because it's it's the it's the giving and receiving yeah that's that's what's

there and and it's it's a simplified version um maybe maybe a little pop psychology maybe a little pop psychology which is fine but that if if you want to take it deeper and and get get more just know that it is look at it as one step yep one piece of the journey yep because because there are probably likely and again i even though i esteem myself to be a psychology hobbyist i don't imagine that i'm writing any books like this anytime soon um but but there are deeper meanings to if your love language is words of affirmation there could be some really deep things that have been hidden for a minute that will help that knowing if words of affirmation are that understanding why words of affirmation are resonates with you and then you know if you

if you have the ability um going to a counselor to explore explore some of that because it could be maybe maybe praise and and stuff like that was was transactional or withheld from you as a child and so that's why you seek it from your partner so so there are deeper meanings to why some of these things resonate with you and again if you have the means or the capability to explore those but it can also feel overwhelming and i want to make sure that i acknowledge the space for that too like sometimes having this simplified thing is perfectly fine I don't need to go deeper as to the whys I just need to know how to communicate it because I haven't had the tools to communicate effectively what I want and how to listen to what my partner wants yeah because if you if you think

about it there's one thing I do want to come back to if you think about it when do we ever teach that exactly right like we're already I've disparaged sex out in this country for a year now um but it's also about like we learn from what we see we model that's what we do we model what we saw and so if we grew up in a household where there was um dysfunctional relationships or we our first relationships were really not maybe the greatest healthiest thing we we learned what we didn't like but but we may not have we may have learned like i hate this thing but we may not I've ever found the words to be like, but I want this instead. We just know what we don't want.

And I think the quiz is phrased in such a way that it will help identify maybe those things that you really want. The thing I was going to come back to, and it was interesting you were talking about going through some of those changes. For folks who've been working through trauma, whether that's sexual trauma or relationship trauma or family dysfunctional trauma or addiction trauma, like whatever that trauma is, as you're working through it, you are becoming a different person. Your needs and wants will change.

and and those was not going through trauma we're going to change over time and i think that's the that's the piece for me is just making sure that we check in with ourselves and see is is this still right for me and also just if you do use the book and i think it's a great point like if i don't i don't want to go to counselor i don't want to do that like i just want to start somewhere i just want you to realize that maybe the five don't work for you and that's okay and that's okay so if you're reading it doesn't mean you don't want love or you're not worthy of love it just means you didn't fall into one of the five categories and i think that's really important for people who are trying to figure out like who they are and what they want and they do the quiz and like

none of those just none of those it's okay it may be sending memes and bad dad jokes um and then it's definitely not a category you could tell them my categories are i've created my own that's in the 2015 update yeah um so i do just want to put that out as a warning if you do decide like this is going to be my foray into figuring out how to be a better partner or learn more about your partner a good for you great for you for taking the step whether you're new to this partnership or whether you're trying to reconnect after some time kudos to you but there's nothing that's ever perfect for everybody so if you're reading through it and you're like and then in the instant i would say take the bigger lesson away how do i communicate

with my partner how do how do I get them to hear me how do they how do I hear them and try to do what makes them happy not just what makes you happy so don't don't worry if you don't fit into the five categories easily yeah yeah if you don't go go to that maybe the broader framework the level above it a little bit which is what what am I feeling that's missing that is that has prompted me to want to fix this yeah and what am i looking for and what is my partner looking for or my friend or my family member like what are they looking for what where is this disconnect what i'll go back to that fulfillment what is not making me feel fulfilled in this relationship yeah i don't i'm thinking about one of the things that's coming up a lot in pop culture right now

which is this idea of invisible work the invisible labor so if you've got a couple where one person feels like they're doing all the invisible labor and they really just want their partner to help and their partner helps but in a way that's not helpful like give me a list or like i did that once yeah it feels like they were doing tell me what you want me to do yeah so that's again it feels like it was being done but it's not really being done it's that tokenism of it and that's that's a problem yeah and and i would say that's that's the that's the kind of nuance that something like this can miss yes because there are the day-to-day things there are the habits the emotional habits that are built in a relationship from day one that this can miss yeah and i but

again we're not saying the whole thing sucks we are saying that some of the underpinnings of it may be questionable because of some of the stereotypes and also the fact that this isn't from proven data um but but if it works for you as a start of something then great if it doesn't work for you as a start of something that's okay too yeah nothing wrong with you well just there could be just keep who knows dr sue no what is the opposite of words of affirmation well i can't diagnose people that's not my there's a joke somewhere there is so so i i know that i roll my eyes and like when you first brought up the love languages i was like but i think it has a place and i think the guiding theory behind it is good the communication is

important hearing your partner being heard by your partner um and also just thinking about what they want and need those are core i think to most relationships and it's something that you just need to continue working on because we change and we evolve because that's what humans do or are supposed to do yeah and and know that you are so much more than one core language as well all the languages all the languages oh and the dad jokes well just um it just i want to throw that out there because sometimes when we do that when we when we simplify this when we oversimplify it it can stunt growth and emotional connection deepening emotional connections yeah um so use it as a tool not the only tool you are way too fascinating people listening and watching

you are way too fascinating to be boiled down to one thing to one of five choices yes all right well with that i want to thank you all for joining us on this episode hold on let me leave my list because i had a lot that i wrote got the things got the things got the way good oh good okay sorry now you may take us out take two i made a lot of notes this time i'm so proud of you words of affirmation acts of service someone is going to watch this and like count it up for us and be like this is how many times you responded to this a touch is definitely not happening right now so we have to rule that one out but anyway go ahead sorry without consent um all right and not

i okay do it everyone thank you for joining us on today's episode of unzipping taboos we really hope that today's episode sparked some new thoughts. We'll open up conversations worth having. And remember, all of this begins with your curiosity. And that is the key to breaking down these barriers, embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review, share it with someone who you think might need to hear this. And if you've got a question or a topic you want us to unzip, please reach out to us via the link in the episode description. A huge thanks to jackandjilladult.com for supporting Unzipping Taboos. Don't forget, you can get 20% off your order with code UNZIPPING20. So please

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