The Language of Love

[Ed. Thank you Meg for this guest post]

Today my husband and I are celebrating our 21st anniversary. Our son, who has been studying engineering at an out-of-state university, is home for the summer. Our daughter is finishing up her junior year of high school. It's a bright sunny day, and there is a bird chirping happily just outside the window. I feel blessed to be in this moment.

We met as students in the campus arcade, where by chance we both liked the same video game. He was quite talkative and had a large group of friends, while I was less outgoing. Despite our differences, we got along well. By the time we got married, we had known each other almost five years, and we rarely disagreed on anything of major importance.

Our most significant challenge was realizing that we sometimes misread each other's nonverbal communication. Much of the meaning in a conversation can come from the voice itself, as Kristina Chew recently wrote. I tend to speak in a rather flat tone that may not fully convey my emotions. Sometimes when I was feeling tired or stressed, my husband would misread my voice and react defensively, thinking that I was angry with him. I would then notice his change of tone and start feeling defensive myself, mistakenly assuming that he was upset about something in the actual words I had said. It took quite a few "But I wasn't angry!" conversations before we learned to always give each other the benefit of the doubt in this regard.

As with any marriage or relationship, we have had to put active effort into understanding each other and accepting differences. In my view, this is not necessarily harder to do when partners are from different cultures or when one partner is Autistic, although communication issues may be more noticeable. After all, there are many kinds of adjustments that have to be made for any relationship to succeed, and not everyone is going to perceive the same ones as being easier or harder.