We Speak the Same Language. Do We Mean the Same Thing?
TRUTH AND CONNECTION
Building a shared life without requiring either person to disappear
By Kyle Patrick MPA/MSW
I grew up Christian, with half my family Lutheran and half Catholic. I never felt a calling there. Later, studying Hinduism and Buddhism spoke to me in ways that felt different.
My husband is Catholic. He prays to the Virgin and introduced me to Santa Muerte. Our home represents both of our spiritual traditions. What matters to me is that there's space for both of us here.
I don't need his sources of meaning to be identical to mine. I am interested in being able to recognize both of us in the home we share.
Even a word like home can carry different expectations: who is welcome there, what is sacred, how much privacy we need, and whose habits seem obvious. Two people can agree that they want a home together without yet knowing what each has agreed to.
“Come over whenever,” for example. To one person, a lovely invitation to drop by. To another, a lovely invitation to arrange a time. Both understand the sentence. Only one is expecting a man at the door in twenty minutes.
There are larger versions of that surprise. What counts as a private matter. Whether a family decision involves two people or twelve. How quickly an apology should arrive, and what makes it sound sincere.
By thirty and beyond, we can have years of practice living one way. Familiarity starts passing itself off as common sense. Then a partner does something differently and we experience his difference as a failure to understand the obvious.
Sometimes the obvious was simply what happened in our house.
More than knowing the words
People who don't share a first language have described both emotional stumbling blocks and a growing ease as they become closer. [7] Knowing the words and feeling at home in them can take different amounts of time.
Suppose one partner goes quiet to avoid saying something hurtful. The other experiences the silence as withdrawal and pushes for an answer. More pressure produces more silence. Soon they're arguing about whether either of them cares, while both believe they're trying to prevent something worse.
Two people from the same country can do this quite efficiently. Nationality doesn't give us an instruction manual for an individual, and an accent doesn't explain an entire personality.
What changes the conversation is discovering the meaning each man attached to the moment. The quiet partner may still need to acknowledge how disappearing affects the other. The partner who pushes may discover why demanding an immediate answer makes understanding less likely. Neither has to declare his whole background wrong to learn something new about the person in front of him.
“What did you think I meant?” and “What were you trying to do?” are useful questions in that imagined exchange. They slow the leap from behavior to accusation. The couple can then agree on something observable: if one needs a pause, he says so and they decide when to return to the conversation. The other doesn't have to interpret an unexplained silence.
The follow-through matters. If they agree to return to the conversation after dinner, returning is part of what makes the pause trustworthy. Otherwise, an explanation about needing space can become another way the same hurt repeats. Understanding each other's meaning gives them a place to begin; keeping the agreement gives that understanding something to stand on.
There's humor in the translation, too. A television reference can carry an entire era of gay life for one man and absolutely nothing for the other. One is delighted by the quotation. The other is wondering why a woman he's never seen has suddenly joined an argument about dinner.
It can be a lovely feeling when somebody gets a reference before we've finished making it. But sharing a life with someone who didn't inherit our cultural favorites offers another pleasure: discovering his.
He has songs with histories attached. There are things his friends quote that make him laugh before he can explain why. Our own collection can be meaningful without becoming the entrance exam for intimacy.
He may show us something we adore. He may also introduce a song we'd happily go the rest of our lives without hearing again. Loving the man doesn't obligate us to love the fucking remix.
A shared home has more than one source
The deeper tension appears when one person's background becomes the default. His holidays don't require discussion. His approach to family is treated as reasonable. The other man's traditions become additions that must explain what they contribute.
Over time, that can leave someone living in a home he helps maintain but doesn't quite recognize as his own.
Faith makes the distinction particularly visible. Asking for a place to pray is different from requiring a partner to pray. Sharing a practice can be an expression of affection without implying shared belief. Some differences remain disagreements, even after both people understand them perfectly.
For some same-sex couples, religious and spiritual practices have offered shared meaning even while religious people around them have been a source of rejection. [8] Making room for faith can involve choosing what belongs in the relationship and what does not.
The shared life is where the difference becomes concrete. What actually happens on a holiday? Whose family obligations take priority? Can each man speak for himself when people find the more fluent partner easier to understand?
A person searching for a word can know precisely what he feels. The speed of his sentence doesn't establish the accuracy of his experience. Patience gives him a chance to reach the conversation in his own voice.
There are limits to what translation can solve. Understanding a behavior's origins doesn't excuse insults, control, or disregard for consent. Some conflicts require a decision about what either person can live with, rather than a better explanation of why the conflict exists.
But difference also brings delight. A familiar occasion acquires a new dish. A phrase begins to feel intimate because of who says it. Something neither person grew up doing becomes part of how they live together.
That's why the space for different spiritual traditions in our home matters to me. I can respect what gives my husband meaning without pretending it gives me exactly the same experience. He can have something here because it matters to him. A shared home becomes more fully ours when neither person has to make a case for every part of himself that arrives with him.
We will still misunderstand each other sometimes. The invitation is to keep asking, and to let the answers affect how we live. What we make together can include things neither of us would have found alone.
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