He Speaks another Language

184 Marbles

    It’s been six months since Ex-man moved out and thankfully my life has become less about surviving a breakup and more about deciding how I’d like to build my life with me and my kids.  There are fewer people asking why we split up, but when they do I’ve developed a new response,  “He speaks another language.”
    I work in a restaurant where the clientele is largely tourists from around the world, many of whom don’t speak English.  For the most part, I am able to communicate with them using hand gestures and simple phrases.  Occasionally there are those who are unwilling to attempt communication and for those people, I have to send in my co-worker who speaks five European languages fluently (if the overwhelmed tourist is Asian -we’re out of luck).  In one of these situations, I realized that was how I often felt with Ex-man - like someone who was trying to express her way of seeing the world but constantly being misunderstood or shut down.  “He speaks another language” became my way of understanding how two good people who love each other, couldn’t manage to get their act together. 
    There’s the old adage, “Opposites attract” and often it’s true.  Frequently we are attracted to people who see the world in a different way - those “who speak a different language.”  The author and relationship therapist Harville Hendrix Ph.D. claims, “It’s been my experience that only opposites attract because that’s the nature of reality…Incompatibility makes for a dynamic, powerful, growing exciting relationship…Though opposites attract at first, eventually they repel. And that’s when the growth can happen - because we are going to be attracted to somebody who’s a carrier of undeveloped parts of ourselves.”(To read more go to http://www.beliefnet.com/Love-Family/Relationships/2004/07/Do-Opposites-Attract.aspx.)
    Tomorrow I head up to the lake for a couple of days to meet up with Ex-man and the kids.  I will keep the phrase “He speaks another language” in mind as I’m sure we will have those incommunicado moments.  The phrase is not steeped in blame or in either of us being right or wrong just the fact that we lacked a willingness to attempt to understand each other’s language.

What would it take for you to attract someone who may speak another language but is open and willing to understand the language that you speak?