Descripton of Study (Does this sound ok to you guys?)

Two parts to communicating love are, love felt and given to a partner and the partner receiving it as love. Although one may give love, if it is not received as such, then the interaction isn’t what it was proposed to be. In order for the person receiving the love, they must tell their partner what makes them feel loved. Love is communicated when one partner behaves or acts in a way that promotes the other person’s well being (Clark, 2006).

In Chapman’s book directed towards married couples he suggests the idea that each individual has a primary love language. This is the way that individuals express love emotionally to one another. Although there are many ways to express love Chapman believes that they can be simplified and categorized into five categories. The five categories include; words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.

An expression of love is a behavior. It is a way to show someone that one loves them though actions, and not necessarily through words. According to Lemieux, in order for a behavior to be considered as an expression of love, it first must be recognized and perceived by both parties as a behavior of love. It cannot be considered a behavior of love if a spouse doesn’t see it as that, or if the person giving it doesn’t give it with that intention (Lemieux 1996). Chapman insists that people use primarily only one language in expressing and receiving love (Chapman 1992). Lemieux found that there are specific behaviors that people do to give and express love to others.

The purpose of the study is to determine whether martial satisfaction is higher when the love languages are used appropriately. A questionnaire will be distributed by convenient sampling. Target participants are those who are married and between the ages of 18-70. Questionnaires will be gathered from students at Weber State, from businesses in which we work, and recruiting by word of mouth to anyone we know who is willing to participate. We are posting the survey online, and our goal is to inform people we know to take it, and to tell others about it. We hope to get a reach out to a variety of ethnicities, and to get an equal amount of males and females.

Based on the questionnaire we hope to find if marital satisfaction does correlate with the five love languages. To measure this we are using the Seven-Item Short Form of the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, which is a valid way to determine marital satisfaction. We will also use questions designed by Chapman to determine a love language, however, we are making his questions into a three part question. The first part asks the participant to decide which love characteristic they prefer. Than using a Likert Scale we will ask the frequency of them receiving this type of love, and also how much they feel loved when this love expression is displayed.