Did Dua Lipa Stumble Across the Intellectual Love Style?

Love is in the air for Dua Lipa and her fiancé, Callum Turner. The husband-and-wife-to-be got engaged last summer, and what brought them together was a modern-day “meet-cute” when they discovered they were both reading the same book at the same time. Trust by Hernán Díaz, in case you want to add it to your reading list.

The media were quick to jump on this serendipitous meeting and label it “book compatibility.” It’s a cute label that makes us wonder: can literary chemistry turn into real-life chemistry, and does matching reading lists mean you’re on the literal same page when it comes to romance?

What Book Compatibility Truly Means

Books mean a lot to Dua Lipa. She reads so prolifically that she launched a podcast called Service95 Book Club, which dives deep into literature and features conversations with authors. More than just a chat about favorite reads, her interviews explore themes like history, politics, symbolism, and the creative forces that the authors used to craft their works. So it makes sense that she’d  look for someone who connects with her on that same literary wavelength.

Book compatibility sounds like an easy thing to measure — people connect over the same books, and because of that, they feel somehow closer. But when you dig down into what that means, it’s a bit more complex. 

If you’re a reader yourself, you understand what books can mean to you. Regardless of the genre — whether you read historical fiction, genre fiction, literary fiction or biographies — books have something to say about life. The human experience, empathy, gender issues, the darker side of humanity, relationships, history, socioeconomics …books have it all. And it doesn’t have to be a high-brow piece of literature to contain depth. I’m a huge reader myself (I cleared over 60 books last year!) and some books that people dismiss as light entertainment can surprise you with their symbolism, as happened to me recently with a horror book I picked up. I found more meaning about life and relationships in that book than I have in some well-lauded literary fiction. Which is to say, don’t judge a book by its cover.

Coming back to book compatibility, most current research on the impact of reading focuses on literary fiction. Studies have examined how reading in this genre can increase a reader’s empathy and theory of mind, which is the capacity to understand that other people have beliefs and desires that differ from yours. They’ve looked at how people who read “sad books” may do so out of a desire for more insight, personal growth and meaning. And they’ve shown how fiction stories can improve emotional and social intelligence.

When you have book compatibility with someone, it suggests that you share a similar perspective. You have similar values and beliefs, or a similar desire for abstract ideas and deeper conversations. It may even highlight that you have similar family backgrounds and life experiences. 

When two people share that kind of perspective, it’s the beginning of a meeting of minds.

What is the Intellectual Love Style?

Truity’s Love Styles are a modern take on five Love Languages® you may be familiar with. Love Languages are the five ways people prefer to give and receive affection: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch.

After surveying over 500,000 people, of all ages and from all around the world, we discovered that there are actually seven, not five, modern love styles. One of them is the Intellectual love style. It describes a person who feels loved when their partner values their intelligence and is instinctively on the same wavelength.

If you have the Intellectual love style, you feel loved when your partner:

• Values your opinions.
• Appreciates your intelligence.
• Includes you in important discussions.
• Loves having deep conversations with you.
• Doesn’t mind an intellectual debate.
• Openly shares their innermost thoughts with you.

People with the Intellectual love style prefer:

• Deep conversations over physical touch, flirtation, gifts and acts of service.
• Bonding over conversations and ideas rather than engaging in fun activities on dates.
• Discussing different perspectives over making small talk.
• A partner who likes creating, researching and using their brain over someone who works with their hands.
• Exploring big-picture topics early in a relationship rather than saving them for later.
• Respectfully debating issues instead of viewing debate as a threat.

Book Compatibility and the Intellectual Love Style

What does that have to do with book compatibility? 

Well, books are a natural gateway to reflection on deep topics, which is why book clubs exist. Readers love to talk about books and draw connections to their own lives. When you and your partner read the same books, and talk about them, you are exchanging theories, stories, philosophies and ideas, and you’re revealing your desire to learn more about the world and the people around you. 

That “meeting of minds” is essentially at the heart of an Intellectual love style. People with this love style feel loved when their partner shares their thirst for knowledge, respects their opinion, and takes part in thoughtful discussion about life’s most profound questions. 

Dua Lipa and Callum Turner may have bonded over books. But in that conversation, they unwittingly exposed their curiosity, thoughtfulness and emotional responses, and discovered that they connect through their minds. 

Is It Bookishness or an Intellectual Love Style?

Not every book lover has an Intellectual love style. Here are some clues that you may prefer to give and receive love this way:

• After you discuss a book with someone, you feel more bonded to that person.
• You feel drawn to people who easily articulate their thoughts about a book (or another work of art).
• You truly love to understand how someone thinks. This means you like hearing the “whys” behind someone’s experience with a book or any other topic they’re discussing.
• You feel disappointed when a fellow reader doesn’t have much to say about a book they’ve read.
• You ask prospective partners about their favorite books and how those books have changed their perspective. And you feel let down when someone doesn’t have a good answer to this question!

None of this is about showing off as a pseudo-intellectual. People with the Intellectual love style value exploring the inner landscapes of people and ideas. When you discuss why a book affected you, you’re trying to get a person to understand you more deeply, and you want to understand them deeply in return. These discussions can (and did, in Dua Lipa’s case) lead to emotional closeness, because unpacking what made a book great also unpacks the way you see the world and what resonates with you. It’s about the deeper conversations that come from discussing books as you both share pieces of yourselves.

Book Compatibility as a Love Language

Thanks to Dua Lipa’s meet-cute, people are talking about book compatibility as a love language. It makes for good headlines, but really they’re talking about the Intellectual love style we’ve already identified, which emphasizes a mental connection as the primary way of giving and receiving love.

Knowing your love style can help you in dating and relationships, because communicating how you feel loved helps your partner better understand and bond with you. It also helps you avoid common relationship missteps — you start to notice when someone’s putting effort in, even if they show love differently than you do.

If you’re not sure of your own love style, you can take the free Seven Love Styles Test to see where you fall. And for those who prefer Intellectual — Dua Lipa’s story shows that sometimes book chemistry really can write the first chapter of something lasting.