When love languages get lost in translation

"So what do you and your wife fight about?" asked my husband's barber, because he and my husband have that kind of relationship. "Um. Mostly love languages."

"Oh yeah, those are big."

I don't know if that's the conversation verbatim--I wasn't there. I only know the essence of it that Loverpants reported to me. It's true, that's what we mostly Have Disagreements About in marriage. It's not that we dispute what our love languages are or their existence. We just read each other's wrong.

What does disagreement look like for us? It means Loverpants and I get in our invisible canoe and row the oars of our dissonance over and harder into the otherwise still waters of our life's little tributary until we make it out to that Island of Disagreement where we hash things out. There aren't usually tears, perhaps almost always some raising of voices. But there are also a lot of agonizing sighs and pacing back and forth.

That happens when you don't speak the same love language. You take things to mean one thing and they mean something entirely different in sentiment and tone. You expect certain words to be said, certain gestures to be made, and then you realize you are different people who communicate love differently. Like, way differently.

Loverpants is an acts of service kind of guy. He will fill your gas tank, he will call to ask if you need anything from the store, and you will never be without clean laundry. He prefers you to give him your quality time. Not your time divided by other errands or catch-ups with a whole slew of random people. Don't give your time at all if it can't be focused and intentional. That's my guy. He is also good at giving gifts and is horrendously bad at receiving them.

I am a gifts and words kind of gal. I like to give gifts, especially handmade or one-of-a-kind items. I like to give words and receive words of affirmation. I find many of the other love languages not only absent from my heart but also confusing. For example, I often feel oppressed by the time people expect me to spend with them or not knowing when someone is going to leave. I am big into social cues and hate to feel that I am burdening someone by overstaying. I love having company over and even having guests stay overnight but I need to know how many days so that I can pace myself socially. Solitude is oxygen. I also find acts of service a complicated language. I don't ever want people to feel obligated to return an act of service, but I don't want to be treated as a doormat either. I understand this makes me sound like a jerk and there is a certain jerkberry jam spread on my heart, that much is true. Marriage makes one realize this about herself quick-smart.

But all is not bleak.

I'm changing one thing about my life this year in order to learn to speak Loverpants' love language better. I'm planning to get up at an obscene hour to do my workout so that when he gets home from work, I can be more available. I can make some tea and while I'm twirling around the aromatic tea bag, he can tell me about the podcast he listened to on his ride home and what Steve Almond says about patronage and exactly how many pounds of skittles he ate at the 4 o'clock slump. I'm going to give him my quality time, try to speak a language that sometimes makes me hands-wringingly anxious and I'm going to do it by making one change that I hope will spur a few other changes around here.

Learning a new language is not hard. I hear it just takes lots of hours of practice and overcoming the fear of sounding stupid. I'd so much rather risk sounding stupid than practicing lots of hours of actual stupidity, though. More languages spoken and discerned = more love in my life. That doesn't sound stupid to me.

Keeping secrets

I figure now, in the season where we are reminded how the desire of ages was fulfilled in a cold barn long ago, that I can tell y'all about a little desire of my own that has been fulfilled. After a long road of trying to find a home for my memoir on our intercultural family, I'm thrilled to pieces that one Kalos Press has made an offer on my book and is eager to welcome "Mixed: Combining cultures, families, faith and awkward laughter" into its fold. I can't wait to tell you more about it.

Basically my feelings:

The title may shift but I am committed to this small press that has shown a strong dedication to new voices of faith --an attribute I was hoping for all along in a publisher. I'll look forward to sharing with you how this offer came to fruition and I'll be honored to share more about the prospective release of the book.

If you want to join in the ring-around-the-rosie: Be sure to keep up with me by Twitter @Kendraspondence or subscribe to our mailing list (on the right panel where it says "Be Cool, Subscribe") if you give two toots about the book ;) Even if you don't, I appreciate your readership here and your friendship on and off this matrix which privileges me to write out some of the crazy rattling around in the ol' head.

That time I tried to perfect the smoky eye and raged at Adele

Was going to a mom party where we get all glitzed out and fight over cookbooks. Thank you, girlfrann Joy. So of course I decided to bust out the smoky eye. And by that I mean I took 40 minutes total to research smoky eye shadow on Pinterest using my particular eye shadow palette, tailored to my particular eye color. Then another 20 to follow along and another 20 to correct my mistakes so that I didn't look like a wax figure in Madame Tussauds. Thanks all-girls high school, thanks for skipping over that whole chapter where you're supposed to master eyeliner applications that don't look like electrocardiograms on the ol' eyelid. Memorizing the epilogue to the Tales of Canterbury was clutch, though.  You just can't imagine how often I quote Chaucer on the daily, while applying eye primer.

After I finally got the special effects where I wanted 'em, I snapchatted smoky eye game on fleek because social media rules.

Drove to mom party. En route, Adele's new song "When We Were Young" cues on FM dial and let me state for the record that that song is a nuclear weapon. One moment, you're just riding in the car to your mom party looking shnazz and the next moment, Adele is hefting onto your lap all the anguish and catharses that everyone who has ever fell in love has ever experienced including all the characters alive and dead on Grey's Anatomy and suddenly the 4.5 hours you spent on your eye shadow is blobbing off into rivers and snowdrifts and you are looking for the windshield wipers for your eyes because you are about to arrive to the mom party looking like you spent the last 3 nights in the poky.

And isn't it ironic that Adele, whose smoky eye game is on a whole 'nother level, whose eyelashes are the same ones used for centuries to paint Italian frescoes, and who sings everything with the most perfectly breathy brassy ache, just became a mother herself. Of all people, you'd think she'd be more respectful of the smoky eye perfected for the mom party. I can't help feeling she knew I could have had it all. Instead I was rolling in the deep. Of the feels and black eyeliner.

***

This was the only picture I took, screenshotted from my snapchat. Oh there's a barfy sentence if you want.

The gal in the foreground is my optometrist. She's a total babe and might be single. Apply within. 

Loved how Christa looked with her big pink prezzie. 

Thank you for wonderful book party memories, Joy. "Calhoun Rocks!"