From Shah Jahan’s Taj Mahal to Shakespeare’s sonnets to the flash-mob proposal phenomenon that swept the world a few years ago, some of the most awe-inspiring creations of humanity have been the product of people expressing their love.
It’s amazing to look at the different ways that love can be expressed, and start thinking about how love is expressed in your own relationships. Has your partner doted on you with unforgettable gifts? Have you ever written your own love poem to express how much you care? Do you prefer an anniversary ring, or would you rather spend the day cuddling together?
These different forms of receiving and expressing love are known as “love languages,” a term popularized by the 1992 book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman. Chapman’s five love languages include quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, and receiving gifts. One of the best ways to ensure you and your partner both feel loved on a regular basis is to understand and work within both of your love languages.
At Shane Co., we’ve spent hours swooning over stories of how different people express their love languages. We’ve pestered everyone we know into taking online love language quizzes to know how they best communicate love. And even though we are partial to the language of thoughtful gift giving, we wanted to know which love languages are the most popular across the country.
We decided to conduct a study of the most popular love languages across the United States. Here’s how we crunched the numbers: First, to find the most popular love languages that people are looking into across the country, we looked at Google Trends data for search terms around the five major love languages in different states. Then, to get an even closer look, we conducted a survey of over 2,600 Americans to break down the most popular love languages by the numbers, analyzing differences across generations and between men and women.
Read on to discover what our survey had to say about our country’s most popular love languages.
At Shane Co., our love language is making people smile with our unique, high-quality pieces. Let your partner know just how much you care with a gift of fine jewelry. Browse our wide selection below to get started.
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The Most Popular Love Language in Every State
First, we looked at the most popular love languages across the country according to state-by-state Google search data. The love language that garnered the most Google searches was quality time, which was the most searched love language in 15 states, from Maine to Alaska! For Americans in all parts of the country, quality time can take many forms. For example, an article from Bustle.com suggests that quality-time-responsive couples can share an evening without the distractions of technology, sync up to a single sleep schedule, or commit blocks of time to dive into shared interests.
Following quality time, the next most popular love language was physical touch. At the bottom of the list was receiving gifts, which was the most searched love language in only three states — Texas, Florida, and New York.
The Most Popular Love Languages in the U.S.
Since the most -searched love languages across different states mostly offer a glimpse of curiosity around love languages, we wanted to separately measure love language identity. Therefore, we collected 2,600 people to ask them about which love languages resonate the most with them.
According to our survey, the most popular love language identity was quality time, for over 40% of respondents. This percentage lines up with the most searched love language that people Google about themselves or their partners.
Next up, 18.5% of respondents said that their self-identified love language was words of affirmation. Women’s Health Magazine suggested that people attuned to words of affirmation respond well to words of encouragement and expressions of why their partner appreciates them. The article suggests that partners of affirmation-attuned individuals try writing short but meaningful love notes or asking their partners which words or phrases have the most impact.
The survey showed that the least-identified love language was acts of service, with only 11.8% of respondents identifying acts of service as their love language.
The Most Popular Love Language by Age Group
Next, we broke down the results by age group, to see which love languages are particularly popular across certain generations. A few interesting data points emerged.
The most widely- identified love language continued to be quality time across different generations, but other love languages saw different rates of frequency in different age groups. For instance, in the 18-24-year-old group, receiving gifts was the second most frequent love language, but its frequency decreased across each subsequent age group, eventually emerging as the least frequent love language for individuals aged 65 years and over.
Another interesting data point was the outlying low frequency of physical touch as a love language for 18-24-year-olds. In other age groups, the frequency of physical touch hovered around 14-15%, but for 18-24-year-olds, physical touch was the least frequent love language, with only 7.6% of respondents identifying physical touch as their love language.
The Most Popular Love Language by Gender
Finally, we looked at the differences in self-identified love languages among men and women. Again, for both men and women, quality time was the most popular love language. Similarly, the second most frequent love language across genders was words of affirmation, with over 20% of men and over 16% of women choosing verbalization as their favorite expression of love.
However, after this, the data began to diverge. For women, the next love language with the highest frequency was acts of service, while for men it was receiving gifts. We’re sure that this difference has led to countless real-life and rom-com relationship disasters, but we’re romantically hopeful that people in relationships will learn and continue to listen to their partners’ specific love languages.
Altogether, we had lots of fun diving into the country’s most popular love languages. And while our favorite love language will always be giving gifts by helping our customers to craft and deliver beautiful engagement rings and jewelry, we’ll never stop swooning over the little treats and grand gestures of love that our customers create!
At Shane Co., our love language is making people smile with our unique, high-quality pieces. Let your partner know just how much you care with a gift of fine jewelry. Browse our wide selection below to get started.
Shop Gift Ideas
I just want to say that I started reading some.of your og posts only recently (within last 6 months maybe) and while I’m not huge into blogs or anything like them, I have really enjoyed yours!! It is fun, educational and easy to read and has even offered a few insights that I wouldn’t have thought about!!! And I really appreciate the wide variety of subjects that are outside your normal business!!!!
Please continue to write such wonderful articles that focus on more than just jewelery– cuz as we all know, relationships are about soooo much more than that!!!!