Love Is Not a Language: Gendered Emotional Labour, Epistemic Injustice, and the Political Economy of Intimacy

Introduction

The concept of “love languages” has become a dominant framework for understanding intimacy over the past decade. The concept has been popularized through self-help books, social media quizzes, and relationship counseling content, promising emotional clarity about relationship problems. Its main idea is that relationship problems stem from a mismatch in how love is expressed and received, instead of stemming from a lack of care. Therefore, its main claim is that if one learns her/his partner’s language and speaks it fluently, intimacy will naturally follow. 

The love languages framework is problematic in an empirical sense as while it has widespread popularity, the concept in fact lacks robust scientific grounding (Egbert & Polk, 2006; Impett et al., 2024). It was, after all, developed by a pastor rather than a clinical psychologist (Moody Publishers, n.d., GDA Speakers, n.d.). However, a deeper problem lies beneath this reassuring simple formula. This love languages framework does not only simplify emotional life; it also systematically misdiagnoses it by framing relational strain as a communication issue. This ends up obscuring the unequal distribution of emotional labour, time, and care, all of which are disproportionately carried by women. Further, the concept reproduces epistemic injustice, as it delegitimatizes structural explanations of relational exhaustion and replaces them with individualized narratives of emotional competence. Repackaging unequal emotional labour as a neutral skill set, the popularity of the framework occludes the marshalling of gendered relational labour to the needs of a changing political economy of care.

From love to labour: a feminist reframing

Care, attention, and emotional regulation are emphasized in feminist scholarship as  “emotional labour” (Hochschild, 1983), which is not simply about feeling, but also about managing one’s own emotions and those of others, in order to sustain social relationships. Emotional labour includes anticipating needs, smoothing conflict, remembering emotional details, and maintaining relational continuity.

Sociological research on emotional labour in intimate relationships shows that it is systematically gendered, meaning that women are more likely to be responsible for maintaining emotional connection, anticipating relational needs, and sustaining relational harmony. This is the case even in relationships characterized by formal commitments to equality (Duncombe & Marsden, 1993). Studies on household and relational dynamics further demonstrate that emotional labour is embedded in the broader gendered division of domestic and care work, which determines who bears responsibility for relational continuity and everyday well-being (Erickson, 2005). 

Although much of the literature on emotional labour in intimate relationships focuses on heterosexual couples, it is not confined to these relationships. Rather, it reflects broader heteronormative expectations about care, responsibility, and emotional management that shape diverse relational contexts, including same-sex and non-heteronormative partnerships (Hammack et al., 2019, Umberson et al., 2020). 

The love languages framework translates care into “expression styles”, and in so doing reframes effort as preference and labour as communication. This way, the focus shifts from who is doing the work to whether the work is being expressed correctly. This is an epistemic move that is, I argue, far from being neutral as it obscures power relations by turning unequal labour into a mutual misunderstanding. 

Gendered responsibility and the illusion of reciprocity

The essential but often overlooked question about the love languages concept is about who is expected to learn and apply “love languages”. In practice, women are more likely to engage with relationship self-help content such as compatibility tests, and then adapt their behavior to meet their partner’s emotional needs (Illous, 2007). On the other hand, men are often positioned as beneficiaries of this emotional translation, rather than its primary agents. This means that women become “emotional interpreters” who are responsible for decoding, adapting, and sustaining intimacy. Daily diary and longitudinal studies of emotional and relational labour demonstrate that women disproportionately perform the load of monitoring relationship quality, remembering emotional details, and initiating emotional repair (Curran et al., 2015). 

An illusion of reciprocity is created by this dynamic, as the “love languages” framework suggests that each partner has a language that deserves to be understood. However, since the labour of translation is distributed in an uneven way, what appears as emotional equality rests on gendered asymmetry instead. 

Epistemic injustice in intimate life

“Epistemic injustice”, as articulated by Miranda Fricker (2007) is also closely linked with the love languages framework. According to Fricker, epistemic injustice takes place when individuals are wronged in their capacity as knowers; either by having their testimony dismissed (testimonial injustice) or by lacking the conceptual resources to make sense of their experiences (hermeneutical injustice). 

Further, research shows that individuals, particularly women, who perform higher levels of relational monitoring and emotional regulation experience greater psychological strain and emotional exhaustion, even when they report strong relationship commitment (Umberson et al., 2020). In the context of “love languages”, women’s experiences of exhaustion, neglect or emotional depletion are reframed as communication failures rather than credible proof of unequal labour. This way, structural explanations such as time poverty, care overload, and economic precarity are rendered unintelligible, and misalignment of expression is offered as an explanation instead. Women are encouraged to reinterpret structural strain as personal inadequacy in their communication styles (if the relationship feels draining, perhaps it is because they are not speaking the right language). This, apart from being a misinterpretation, also causes an epistemic silencing of structural critique.

The political economy of intimacy

The popularity of love languages narrative needs to be understood within a broader political-economic context. Across advances and emerging economies, social welfare systems have been reduced, care infrastructures weakened, and labour markets rendered increasingly precarious (Fraser, 2016). As these collective forms of security erode, intimate relationships are burdened with compensatory functions. 

Relationships are now expected to provide emotional stability, psychological support, and even economic buffering in the absence of robust public provision. This phenomenon is described as the “privatization of care”, indicating that responsibilities once shared socially are now relocated to the private sphere (Razavi, 2007). 

“Love languages”, therefore, function as a micro means of governance by offering guidance on how intimacy should absorb stress without questioning why such absorption is necessary in the first place. This turns emotional labour into an informal welfare mechanism which is disproportionately supplied by women. 

Envoi

“Love languages” endure not because they explain relationships well (Egbert & Polk, 2006; Impett et al., 2024), but because they offer an emotionally comforting narrative that avoids confronting, or redressing deeper structural constraints.

Author Bio:

Zeynep Temel is a PhD candidate in International Political Economy at Marmara University, and currently based in Shanghai. Her research focuses on feminist political economy, care regimes, epistemic justice, and the governance of intimacy in contemporary global contexts. She has published analytical and commentary pieces on gender, political economy, and digital culture, and holds multiple Master’s degrees in International Political Economy, International Relations, and Conflict Studies.

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