I asked my husband — I’ll call him Jackson, because that’s his name — to take the quiz at the back of the book with me so that we could figure out what our love languages were. He was kind of lackluster about it. But we took the quiz and “discovered” that his love language is physical touch. (I speak the language of touch, too, but sometimes I forget how to speak it when someone forgets where the hamper is.)Mine is acts of service. I need acts of service. It is not merely my language; it is also my protein. My husband and I both work all the time and we have a boundary-less 6-year-old who has not stopped talking or thinking or winking while holding a battery to her lips since she was 2 years old. There is a lot that has to be done, and I often ask him to do it: Fix the kitchen light, clear the ladybug exoskeletons from the high fixtures, throw away the Christmas tree that is frozen in time outside by the firepit, help me write a script for our show at midnight, explain to me how to use a USB cord like I’m from the past — in fact do anything that has to do with time and me. I feel loved when he does those things, but mostly he doesn’t do them. I told him this.He said, “My whole life is an act of service to you.”I pointed to the Christmas tree outside, lying on its browning side on the snow-covered patio. It’s cruel to the tree, to the notion of Christmas, to the idea of loving partnerships. Or so I told him.Women are not always comfortable saying what we want from our partners. We’ve been conditioned that it’s akin to nagging. Dr. Chapman’s framework gives people who find it hard to ask for what they need a language in which to make requests.I thought I didn’t have a problem making requests. I thought I was really very good at it. But it turns out I’m not.Say I want to convince Jackson that it’s not safe for our daughter to ride the ski lift by herself. I somehow cannot bring myself to say, “I’m scared, and I don’t want her to go on the lift alone, even though you ski with her often and it is your observed and considered opinion that she is ready.” I understand my fears are not rational, and I know he doesn’t go in for irrationality.So instead I make up evidence because he respects studies and publications. I often say, “Oh, well yes, they published a study in The Times.” In this case I say there was a study I read, in The Times, about the psychological effects on children ages 5 to 8 of riding ski lifts alone. “They found,” I say, “that it has caused feelings of …”