Speaking Love, Hearing Needs: Why Connection Still Eludes Us

What two bestselling books teach us about love—and what they leave out

“Love is a choice you make every day,” writes Gary Chapman in The 5 Love Languages. Meanwhile, Marshall Rosenberg reminds us in Nonviolent Communication that “what others do may be the stimulus of our feelings, but not the cause.”

These two quotes, from books that have shaped how millions approach relationships, seem almost contradictory. One suggests we are responsible for actively filling others’ emotional needs through loving actions. The other insists we are not responsible for how others feel—that our task is empathy, not emotional caretaking.

After rereading both books, I’ve been reflecting on what it really means to connect with another person. These books offer transformative tools for intimacy and understanding, yet even armed with their wisdom, many of us still struggle to relate authentically. Why?

This piece explores that tension. It begins by introducing the core principles of each book, then unpacks their differing assumptions about love, responsibility, and emotional well-being. Finally, it turns to a deeper question: what if the real crisis isn’t how we relate, but whether we even try to relate at all anymore?

Two Frameworks for Human Connection
Both books aim to help us love better, but they take different routes.

The 5 Love Languages centers on the idea that each person has a "primary love language"—Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Acts of Service, Physical Touch, or Receiving Gifts. Chapman encourages us to identify our partner’s love language and choose to love them in that language, even when it doesn’t come naturally. Love, he argues, is a decision, not just a feeling. The metaphor of the “love tank” reinforces this idea—our job is to keep our partner’s tank full through intentional loving actions.

In contrast, Nonviolent Communication (NVC) focuses on understanding the deeper needs that drive our emotions and behaviors. Rather than assuming responsibility for another’s emotional state, Rosenberg urges us to empathize deeply without becoming an “emotion slave.” NVC teaches us to express feelings and needs without blame, to listen without defensiveness, and to cultivate self-empathy when we are overwhelmed.

Both frameworks value emotional presence and effort. But when placed side by side, some fundamental tensions emerge.

Five Key Contrasts Between 5LL and NVC

1. Responsibility for Emotion

   • 5LL: Encourages us to take active steps to improve our partner’s emotional state. If their love tank is empty, it’s our job to fill it by speaking their language of love. As Chapman writes, “Love is a choice we make every day. If we learn to speak our partner’s primary love language, they will feel loved and secure.”

   • NVC: Emphasizes that emotions arise from our own unmet or met needs. Rosenberg writes, “We are never angry because of what someone else did. Our anger comes from the unmet needs inside us.” Rather than fixing someone’s feelings, our role is to offer empathetic presence—to help them name what they’re feeling and needing without taking on the burden of making them feel better.

   • This distinction matters, because it shapes how we show up: Are we there to soothe and serve, or to witness and support?

2. Responding to Neediness

   • 5LL: Suggests we lean in with love, especially when our partner is needy or withdrawn. The solution is to express love in the language they understand, even if we’re not feeling it ourselves. This reflects a view of love as sacrificial and action-oriented.

   • NVC: Suggests listening deeply and empathetically without trying to fix. A needy partner may have unmet needs that aren’t ours to fulfill directly. Our role is to help them access clarity about those needs. Crucially, NVC invites us to notice our own limits—if we’re overwhelmed, we’re encouraged to attend to ourselves first before re-engaging.

3. Where Emotions Come From

   • 5LL: Operates on the belief that love is received externally. We feel loved when someone acts in accordance with our preferred love language. If we’re not getting those acts, we’re likely to feel unloved.

   • NVC: Holds that our emotions are generated internally, based on whether our needs are being met. Someone ignoring our love language may feel painful—but not because they failed us, but because a core need like affection or appreciation went unmet. This framing grants us more agency and insight into our emotional world.

4. Loving the Unlovable

   • 5LL: Explicitly calls for us to love even when our partner seems unlovable. Chapman shares stories of couples whose marriages were saved because one partner chose to continue giving love even when the other had emotionally checked out. “When someone acts unlovingly toward us,” he writes, “they are usually crying out for love.”

   • NVC: Acknowledges that love without boundaries can become self-betrayal. If someone is behaving in a way that violates our needs, the priority is to first acknowledge and care for ourselves. “Self-empathy in NVC means being able to connect with our own feelings and needs,” Rosenberg writes. Sometimes the most compassionate thing is not to give more love, but to step back with clarity and integrity.

5. What to Do When We’re Empty

   • 5LL: Suggests we engage in self-love practices to refill our own tank—spend time doing what recharges us, affirm ourselves, and then continue loving our partner with renewed energy.

   • NVC: Goes further. When we're in pain, the first step isn’t to give love or empathy to others—it’s to offer it to ourselves. Rosenberg recommends pausing, breathing, naming our unmet needs, and even expressing our distress nonviolently (screaming into a pillow, taking space). The goal is not to override our pain, but to honor it as a valid signal.

Despite these philosophical differences, there’s a beautiful synergy: both frameworks promote understanding as the key to connection.

The 5 Love Languages teaches us to speak the emotional dialect that resonates most with our partner. This act of love is not merely about the gesture itself, but the effort it takes to learn someone else’s emotional landscape. It's an invitation to step outside ourselves and into another's world.

Nonviolent Communication, meanwhile, offers the tools to go beneath surface behaviors and words, into the realm of core needs. It teaches us to listen for what is unspoken—to hear what someone truly longs for, even when their words are clumsy, angry, or incomplete.

Together, they create a fuller picture of what relational understanding looks like: to express love in a language that matters, while also tuning into the universal needs that connect us all. One teaches how to give love generously; the other, how to receive others empathetically without losing ourselves.

They don’t always align, but in tandem they challenge us to be more intentional, more compassionate, and more present—to speak love, and to hear need.

Why Human Connection Still Eludes Us
If the tools are available, why do so many of us still struggle to connect?

The answer may lie at a more fundamental level—not in how we relate, but in whether we are even motivated to initiate connection at all.

Before we can apply the techniques of The 5 Love Languages or Nonviolent Communication, something else must happen: a willingness to start. And that starting point is increasingly in jeopardy.

From my own observations, I see three subtle but powerful forces interfering with that first step of connection:

1. Lack of Motivation to Initiate or Sustain Connection
   Many people today lack the basic impulse to reach out. Texts go unanswered not because of malice, but inertia. The screen is always a tap away, yet the desire to respond often feels distant. We've internalized a culture of delayed replies, ghosting, and non-commitment. “Sorry, just saw this” has become a reflexive defense, not a sincere explanation.

2. Decline in Authenticity and Self-Expression
   When people do connect, it’s often through a veil of curation. The pressure to appear polished, interesting, or successful on social media has seeped into our everyday conversations. Being real—truly showing up without filters or defenses—feels risky. So many choose silence or small talk over vulnerability. The courage to say, “I miss you,” “I’m hurt,” or even “I’d love to spend time with you” has diminished.

3. Hormonal and Emotional Dysregulation
   There’s also a biological layer. Many people today suffer from chronic stress, poor sleep, nutrient imbalances, and overstimulation. Our nervous systems are in constant fight-or-flight mode, fed by dopamine hits from short-form videos and endless scrolls. In that state, connection isn’t just hard—it’s physiologically threatening. Intimacy requires calm, regulated presence. But for many, baseline burnout has replaced that calm.

These forces don’t just complicate connection—they block its very initiation. And so, while the skills taught in 5LL and NVC are powerful, they often presuppose a pre-existing desire to connect.

Maybe before we practice how to love or how to empathize, we need to rekindle why we want to. Human connection is not just about technique—it begins with presence, curiosity, and the belief that showing up with your whole self is worth it.

Both The 5 Love Languages and Nonviolent Communication are maps. But we have to want to take the journey.

The question is: do we still?

[Thanks to my friends who shared their insights when reading these two books with me; With the help of ChatGPT-4o]