This Love Language Gets A Bad Reputation — But Here’s What It’s Really About

A person who has gifts as their love language feels most loved when their partner gives them tangible items. According to Chapman’s love language theory, a love language is simply a person’s preferred way of receiving affection in a relationship. Gifts is one of the five love languages, alongside words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, and acts of service.

For people with gifts as a love language, the act of giving a gift serves as a gesture of affection and care because it shows the person was thinking about you while you weren’t around and wanted to find a way to make you smile. The gift also becomes a physical token memorializing a moment, experience, or feeling. In other words, it’s less about the specific thing that’s being given and more about what that thing symbolizes.

“The present itself is nice, but it’s really the thought behind it that counts,” relationship coach Julie Nguyen writes at mbg. “The gift becomes an object that helps you remember they were thinking of you, which fills you with love.”