A Recipe for Love

The five “love languages”: words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, physical touch, and gift giving,  were introduced in 1992 by counselor Gary Chapman. Since then, the concept has become widely known, with over 20 million books sold and countless TikToks, quizzes, and memes built around it. But while helpful for many, this framework is limited. It often overlooks the ways love is shaped by culture, neurodivergence, friendship, loss, queerness, and digital connection.

A Recipe for Love started with a question I kept coming back to: What if love languages weren’t fixed categories, but evolving, personal, and shaped by everyday rituals, humor, and lived experience?

Blending a conversational card game with a metaphorical cookbook, this project invites people to explore how they give and receive love in ways that aren’t always named. It centers gestures like sharing brain-rot memes, sitting in silence together, or knowing someone’s coffee order by heart. Readers are encouraged to engage through tactile, sensory cues. The project is presented as a dinner table setting, complete with layered textures and a worn-in deck of cards that prompt reflection and connection.

Through playful prompts and a bit of chaos, A Recipe for Love creates space for reflection, laughter, and storytelling. It’s part research, part lived experience, and part love letter to the quiet and weird ways we show we care.