Oby Love — Adult attachment and love-style frameworks | obylove.com
The 1992 framework names five categories — words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch — and the honest way to use it is a two-week trial of the two or three that actually land with your partner.
The framework's claim is modest: people differ in which behaviours register to them as care. The five categories are words of affirmation (spoken appreciation, encouragement, tenderness), quality time (undivided attention, shared activity without a screen), receiving gifts (visible tokens that say 'I was thinking of you'), acts of service (doing the task the other person dreads) and physical touch (contact that is affectionate rather than sexual only).
The framework dates from 1992 and is a practitioner vocabulary, not a scored instrument like the 36-item ECR. That is a strength in one sense: because there is no official scale, the test has to be behavioural — you watch what your partner requests, what they complain about and what they do for you, since people usually give in their own language.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
The two-week trial works like this. In week one, log every request and complaint your partner makes and sort each into one of the five categories; the most frequent category is your hypothesis. In week two, deliver the top two or three categories deliberately — one concrete act per day — and watch what visibly lands: a relaxed evening, a returned bid, a lighter argument.
Three failures spoil the trial. Announcing the experiment turns it into a scoreboard. Running it during a crisis week confuses stress response with preference. And expecting instant reciprocation misses the point — you are testing which behaviours register, not buying behaviour in return.
Language preferences sit on top of attachment, not underneath it. A preoccupied partner may experience a quiet evening together as rejection regardless of how much quality time you schedule, and a dismissing partner may need service acts before touch feels safe. For that layer, read /four-attachment-styles; for what happens when the mismatches reach an argument, read /four-horsemen-conflict.
Further reading