The Five Apology Languages and Other Wisdom from Dr. Gary Chapman, Author of “The Five Love Languages”
On February 28, 2024, Dr. Gary Chapman spoke at Mt. Bethel Church on the topic of “Building Better Relationships: Understanding the 5 Love Languages.” You can read a summary of his talk here.
At the end of the event, attendees were encouraged to submit questions through a survey. Dr. Chapman graciously agreed to a follow-up interview with our team where he answered many of the questions submitted. This is the final part of a blog series dedicated to sharing Dr. Chapman’s answers to those questions.
Q: We had a widow who had a very long, good marriage before their spouse passed, but is now trying to date again. They submitted two questions: one, should they buy “The 5 Love Languages for Singles?”
Dr. Chapman: I wrote the book for singles really with younger singles in mind because I apply the concept to their parents, to their siblings, to their college roommates, to their dating partners and to their work associates. So, I don’t think they’d find that book very helpful. What was their second question?
Q: Their second question was, if they know their love language is quality time, how much time is too much time for them to be spending with their new significant other?
Dr. Chapman: I don’t know if I have a quantitative answer for that, but I do get they’re asking what’s appropriate since it’s different than marriage. When you’re beginning another new relationship after having been married for a considerable amount of time, it is a challenge and there are good things about it. Obviously, if you like this person and they like you, then it’s good for both of you to express love in each other’s primary love language. So, I would recommend this person discuss it with the person they’re dating. Maybe both of them working through the original love languages book together would be helpful.
Q: For our final question, since you mentioned it during your talk in February, what are the five apology languages and is there any correlation between them and the five love languages?
Dr. Chapman: We discovered the five apology languages by asking thousands of people two questions:
- When you apologize, what do you typically say or do?
- When someone’s apologizing to you, what do you want to hear them say and do?
And just like with the love languages, we found we could sort everybody’s answer into one of five categories:
- Expressing Regret
- Accepting Responsibility
- Offering to Make Restitution
- Genuinely Repenting (as in never committing the offense again)
- Requesting Forgiveness
Now again, just like the love languages, you might speak or hear multiple of these, but there’s one or two that really click with you–and by that, I mean there’s one or two that you do naturally when you apologize or that you expect others to do when they’re truly sorry about something. We also found that, just like the love languages, your primary apology language is more than likely the way you watched your parents apologize when growing up.
And that’s why the book on the of the five apology languages can really help some couples come alive because they’ve never learned how to apologize and/or neither one of them consider the other person to be sincere when they’re apologizing. So, they have a hard time forgiving and they get all these things built up between them because they can’t process it in a positive way.
But what you’ll learn in the book is that just like the five love languages, you can learn to recognize and speak all five of the apology languages.
Thank you to all who submitted questions for Dr. Chapman! You can view more of the submitted questions, along with Dr. Chapman’s answers, by checking out parts one, two , three, four and five of this blog series.