The Rules Redux: Language Barrier Love And The Surprising Advantages of Dating Someone You Can't Understand

Is communication the key to long-lasting relationships? Not according to Sean Connery. The former James Bond star credits the language barrier for the longevity of 30-year marriage to his French wife, Micheline. Though no paragon of husbandly virtues, Connery may be on to something. 

As a dating coach I see over-communication spoiling relationships far more often than lack of communication, particularly in the early stages of dating. A language barrier is an extreme - though highly effective - means of preventing you from opening up too fast.

I learned the surprising advantages of language barriers in love when I met a handsome Brazilian surfer. At the time Raphael's English was limited, and to this day I can barely speak a word of Portuguese. Such lack of fluency might seem like an obstacle to deep rapport, but I credit the language barrier for fast-tracking the relationship to proposal and marriage within a year.

Counterintuitive, I'll grant you, but consider the benefits of constrained communication: 

• No man-terrifying "relationship talks."
• Fewer heated debates about stem cell research and Oscar predictions.
• Less ambiguity about date logistics (aware of the language barrier, he nails down date/time/place to avoid any misunderstanding).
• Exotic charm of endearments uttered in a foreign tongue.
• And most importantly: less conversation, more kissing.

 Of course, language-barrier love is not without its drawbacks:

• It can promote over-emphasis on physical (vs. intellectual) compatibility. 
• Silences can stretch out longer than you may like. 
• No way to eavesdrop on his conversations with his mother or friends. 
• And last but not least, the things you thought you understood about your partner may later not turn out to be true. 

Moreover, while a language barrier can fan a romantic "spark" into an abiding flame, it won't substitute for that initial physical attraction and its underlying, ineffable, almost spiritual connection. Worse, a language barrier can backfire when a woman pursues a man, becoming the all-purpose excuse for why he didn't call when he said he would, forgot Valentine's Day, hasn't introduced you to his friends, etc.

Consider the story of Kate, who met and developed a wild crush on Antoine while vacationing in France. A can-do media executive, Kate decided to "make it happen" with Antoine, getting him a job stateside and plunging him into her elite social circle. Antoine was grateful for the help, and happy enough to sleep with her. But even as his English improved, and Kate became eagerly fluent in French, he never managed those most basic expressions by which relationships evolve, such as "I love you," and "Let's not see other people."

Even when a man initiates the relationship - you can easily turn him off by pestering him with questions, pouring out your heart, or complaining endlessly about your problems. When you both speak the same language these pitfalls can be hard to avoid - especially when he prods you with overly-personal questions on your first few dates. Fortunately, you don't have to feign a thick foreign accent to reap the benefits of a language barrier in love. Give these few tips a try:  

• Don't talk so much on dates. "Men fall in love with your essence, not with anything in particular you say," observe Sherrie Schneider and Ellen Fein, authors of The Rules. So don't feel the need to rack your brain to come up with witty conversation.
• Banish uncomfortable silences - NOT by filling them up with forced chatter - but by learning to be comfortable with quiet.
• Don't treat a potential mate as your therapist, revealing details of previous relationships, your illnesses or emotional issues, job problems, etc.
• If angry or hurt, wait 24 hours to air the issue with your partner. This waiting period will help you respond (vs. react) while separating important conflicts from inconsequential disagreements.

 Those of us (bloggers in particular!) who love to express ourselves may have a hard time grasping the benefits of saying less -- let alone an outright language barrier. But just as printing too much money can diminish the value of the dollar, so can speaking too effusively diminish the value of what is said. Edward R. Murrow would be the last man to dismiss the importance of communication, yet even he recognized its limits when he observed: "People say conversation is a lost art; how often have I wished it were."

 

Follow Jag Carrao on Twitter: www.twitter.com/maliburulesgirl

Comments

[moonflowerjewelry]

09:29 AM on 10/15/2009

...well, i am only a little cynical...

[moonflowerjewelry]

09:24 AM on 10/15/2009

...it isn't love, honey, it's lust...
not that there is anything wrong with some healthy, mutual lust...

[jesselee26]

10:07 AM on 10/15/2009

hmmm.... maybe initially. my husband and i have been together ten years, married for eight and have two kids... so i guess its a slow burning kind of lust.
seriously though, if the chemistry is there, it's there. we learned about each other slowly, but we also discovered a lot about how the other met with obstacles and struggled through adversitie­s. instead of hiding from each other behind the language barrier, we were actually able to watch more closely.

[Soulsurfer]

08:41 AM on 10/15/2009

The advantage is obvious...­.........l­ess talking, more touching.

[jesselee26]

08:50 AM on 10/15/2009

word

[jesselee26]

07:58 AM on 10/15/2009

when i started dating my husband ten years ago, he spoke barely any english. most of my friends thought i was crazy. buy today is our eight year wedding anniversar­y.

[whoknew---]

04:03 AM on 10/15/2009

My mom (Amer. Filipino) used to kid that when she met my dad (French Canadian) she didn't understand one word the guy was trying to say.

She finally figured out what he was talking about after having four of his kids.

They were together over 35 years.

Rest in peace mom & dad....

[KIVPossum]

03:51 AM on 10/15/2009

When I first met my wife we knew maybe 20 words in each other's language. On our first date a couple of years later, we had improved our vocabulari­es, but still relied on pantomine and dictionari­es. A couple of years after that, when we married, we were both marginally conversant in the other's language. Now we move between the two, and our 'official' language in the same conversati­on.

It was actually a fun, binding process and helped us. Instead of assuming we know what each other said, we worked to understand and that taught us patience. Long ago we agreed we would never automatica­lly assume we knew what was said or implied - if something came up that had the potential to be a problem, we restated it three times to be sure we understood what was meant. Being willing to slow down and try to understand your partner prevents a lot of arguments.

In the early days it was interestin­g how we would trade roles as 'protector­' when we were traveling. And the time we spent teaching each other was important to us; it let us show each other we cared enough to work to communicat­e.

It was a fun road.

[schatsie]

07:57 AM on 10/15/2009

Wow, what a wonderful experience for the both of you!

[fff]

02:27 AM on 10/15/2009

Men don't ever fall in love with your "essence". Ever. And neither do women men. You know what they "fall in love with"? Themselves­, as reflected in the other person, i.e. a projection­. The rest of the relationsh­ip is about trying to make the other conform to that projection (or else attempt to live up to the other's projection­). And when the "essence" of the other becomes too great to ignore, then the relationsh­ip comes apart. Or, it is born!

Having a language barrier prolongs that eventualit­y because it allows the self-proje­ction to be sustained because the "essences" remained fully unconveyed as practical understand­ing: it's delayed "essence" exchange. lol. But sooner or later, it's down to humans being human in an uncertain world reaching out across that gulf that appears to separate us---for that "connectio­n" (you know exactly what I mean). When that moment occurs, the illusions about the "other" disappear immediatel­y, along with the "relations­hip"---if it is based on the externally driven self-worth that this article advocates.

Close to the bone yet, fantasia-l­adies? lol. Keep dreamin...­.

Become who you are, fall in love with your self first. "Need" no one. Then share that love with another. As you might actually be able to "see" the "other", and enter into relationsh­ip with eyes open, and perhaps a little joy, delight, and an appreciati­on for what is "not you".

Otherwise, it's caveat emptor, my lovelies.

[kellygrrrl]

11:55 PM on 10/14/2009

my best-frien­d is Belgian. Laughter is universal, and there is no shortage of it.

[dsrtdwler]

11:46 PM on 10/14/2009

I dated a Brit for a while and was constantly entertaine­d when we would have no clue what the other was talking about, and we both spoke English fluently.

[Tunghoy]

11:53 PM on 10/14/2009

Did she appreciate your Python routines?

[Tunghoy]

11:29 PM on 10/14/2009

When I was 23 years old, I graduated college and went to England and France as a graduation present. On my 2nd day in Paris, I was with a buddy in a cafe on the Champs d'Elysees, when we met two gorgeous French girls, each about 5 or 6 years older than us. We struck up a conversati­on in broken French and broken English (theirs, not ours) and they gave us a tour of the city until 3am. The language barrier was helpful -- probably keep us from making idiots of ourselves.

A couple of days later, Martine took me on a tour of Chateau Versailles­. Having recently seen a certain Mel Brooks movie, and looking at the monarchy's opulence, all I could tell her was, "It'd good to be the king!" She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. It was probably better that way.

[melecky]

11:17 PM on 10/14/2009

Hi, this my 1st time commenting on HP. This article caught my interest because I am a 55 y.o. African American female married to a 57 y.o. man from the Czech Republic,w­ho did not now English when we first met 5 years ago. He has been in the USA for 8 years and speaks better English than most people here in Texas. :-) We operate a Art/Design studio together; he is the artist and I manage customer, invoices, bids etc. Most people when they first meet us, feel that we have been togethe for a longtime. They are surprise to find out we only been together for 5 years. All I can say is we enjoy ourselves; we both like to travel, visit the parks, coffee houses :-) He has really made me see America in a new way and appreciate this country.Wh­en he saw the Redwoods in California for the first time, he was shock!!! (I am from that part of California­) Next week we will be visiting D.C. (I was born there) and we both can not wait to tour the city. Me with new eyes. We are going there because he painted a picture of me called "Queen Genie" and it was picked out of 3,300 other portraits to be on display at the Smithsonia­n National Portrait Gallery. The judges only picked 48 other portriat artist entries. We are both so excited!!! Here is a link http://mel­ecky.com.

[KVSmith]

02:33 AM on 10/15/2009

I encourage everybody to read the comment above by "Queen Genie". And then visit the website she links -- http://mel­ecky.com/.

There's a photo of her Czech husband painting her portrait, and it is easy to see why this portrait was chosen to be displayed at the Smithsonia­n National Portrait Gallery.

[KIVPossum]

05:13 AM on 10/15/2009

Whoa.....s­o he's lived in the U.S. for 8 years, but knew no English 5 years ago - three years in the U.S. without leaning English? Granted English is a somewhat difficult langugage, but 3 years?

To me, when you 'adopt' a country, a prime obligation is to learn the language. When I made the decision to come here, I knew it would be my job to learn Russian, and learn it quickly. I was an 'old goat' like your husband and it took me 90 days to get marginally conversant­. In a year I had solid conversati­onal skills, though I will always make gramatical mistakes.

However, you are absolutely correct in the 'seeing with new eyes'. I thought I knew America, my wife thought she knew East Europe. That was until she showed me my country and I showed her hers.

[schatsie]

08:01 AM on 10/15/2009

I am sick of hearing that you are supposed to learn the language when you move someplace.­...There were millions of Germans that immigrated to the US in the 1800s and NONE OF THEM LEARNED ENGLISH in years and years and years....T­hey had their own German papers, just like other ethnic groups in this country have their own newspapers­....

[fleaba]

11:09 PM on 10/14/2009

I knew a guy who married a woman from the Solomon Islands when he was a Peace Corps volunteer.
He brought her back to Colorado to live in a ski town. The poor woman hated it and was totally jealous of this guy even talking with another woman. I felt sorry for her being taken out of her nice warm home to the frozen rockies to a culture she did not understand­.

[Jag Carrao]

10:59 PM on 10/14/2009

Question for the men reading this post: if you have a woman in your life, do you wish she would talk more, or talk less? Do you find yourself vexed because she mysterious­ly keeps thoughts to herself...­.or annoyed because she yammers on endlessly, blah blah blah?

Very interested in getting the male perspectiv­e on this.....

[marcosweb]

11:41 PM on 10/14/2009

When i met my wife, she spoke very little english... we played internatio­nal charades.
Her communicat­ion was always direct, with the few words she was able to speak...bu­t clear in her intention non the less...mak­ing my "game" obsolete. Today, seventeen years later, thankful of those days of having to, stop, listen and understand what she was conveying and having to answer without the "double meanings" and inuendos. As far as I'm concerned she can never talk too much. She doesn't babble, she's says what she feels, means and always on point. Like it or not, she has mastered the language enough to communicat­e her view (now without little drawings and hand signals) and love her for it. She has made me a better person and man.

[Jag Carrao]

12:24 AM on 10/15/2009

Awwww....wha­t a wonderful love story! And you raise a very important point that I neglected in my blog -- the lack of double meaning and innuendos when you have a language barrier. When you have to work extra hard to make yourself understood­, you don't have time for such word games. I just thought of another benefit: my husband can swear as much as he wants (in Portuguese­) without offending me!

[LiberalBuzz]

12:55 AM on 10/15/2009

It's hard to say what works best for everyone concerned.

In my case I am head over heels with a woman a decade my junior. We first met in 1986, had a short relationsh­ip, then again in 1992. Then we just sort of stayed in touch over the years.. Finally earlier this year we had a long talk one night and have been talking for the last several months. Every night.

Even after we spend a weekend together or more.

We talk all the time. I have no problem with "relations­hip talks" at all. We are going slow, but the communicat­ion is the best part. We've both been through the wars and talking has brought us closer then before.

So i would say more communicat­ion has worked really well for us. I have no problem with relationsh­ip talking at all but it only works if BOTH sides are into listening.

[yippiekiaay]

10:29 PM on 10/14/2009

Are men and women supposed to understand eachother?­?? isn't that counter-pr­oductive to natural law?

[Bitsko]

10:03 PM on 10/14/2009

"Dating Someone You Can't Understand­"? Try 27 years of marriage and get back to me.