different languages

I'm not married as long, but I have to agree with the idea that men and women do speak different languages. When Tom says, "I'll help you clean" it does not mean what I assume it to mean. And I've learned that when he says, "I'm really hungry" what he actually means is, Get me some food, woman! But that doesn't mean that I don't still pretend I haven't figured this out-it buys me time until he actually comes out and asks, can you make me lunch? Shh.

From this blog: http://www.melanielynnehauser.com/wordpress/

February 2, 2006
What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate
Filed under: General — Melanie Lynne Hauser @ 12:07 pm
I have the best husband in the world. Seriously. He told me so. I’m blessed in many, many ways — DAH makes me laugh, holds me when I cry, doesn’t make fun of my many experimental attempts to sport the Ultimate Cute Hair. He’s the go-to guy when we have stopped up toilets, when the trash needs to be taken out, when there are dead animals in the driveway. (That sounds weird, doesn’t it? I’m talking about the occasional dead chipmunk or mole, not zebras and elephants.)
But.
After 18 years of marriage (I married at a very young age, of course. Before I could drive, practically. Ahem.), I am still perplexed by the fact that at times we seem to speak different languages. For example, anything I say can be interpreted, in DAH language, as a sexual innuendo. (Me: Can you change the light bulb over the kitchen sink? DAH: You want me to change your light bulbs? (accompanied by adolescent giggles).
For years, he would say things like, “Let’s go look at TV’s.” (Or “a new car,” or “a new stove,” etc.) And I’d jump up and down with excitement, grab the checkbook, accompany him — only to find out that we were, literally, going to go look at TV’s. For hours on end. And then leave empty-handed and go back home to watch our old TV, which looked crappier than ever after a day spent at Best Buy. And then he’d seem to forget about the whole thing, and he’d never talk about TV’s again. This happened all the time — I was like Charlie Brown, forever falling for Lucy’s promise that she’d hold the football for him. Finally — I think it was about year 15 — I figured out what he was really saying, stopped getting excited, and told him to go look at TV’s his own damn self.
But there’s one language difference I can never get used to. It has to do with the word “help.”
Back in the summer, when I was really busy for the book launch, we splurged and hired a cleaning service to come in every two weeks. It was heaven. Heaven, I tell you! It was so wonderful to know that, no matter how horrible the house got, angels would swoop in every two weeks and magically take care of it all.
But right around Christmas, we decided to discontinue this service, for a variety of reasons. So we said good-bye to the angels. And DAH said to me (and I wrote it down, word for word, just to have as evidence in any eventual divorce proceedings), “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll help clean.”
I naively interpreted this as — DAH would help. Clean. Actually pick up a Swiffer or a vacuum cleaner now and then.
Now, though, a couple of months into our unholy pact, I realize that to DAH, “I’ll help clean” really meant, “I’ll ignore layers of dust and piles of dishes and won’t complain when you’re too busy to provide me with clean underwear — I’ll just go without. And by not complaining — nay, not even noticing — how horrific the house is, I’m being a good husband and cutting you some slack.”
Now, he actually has a point. Because I happen to know some women — otherwise smart, educated women — whose husbands expect a pristine house in exchange for allowing them to stay home and raise their kids and volunteer in the community and do all the yard work. (Mighty big of them, isn’t it?) I’ve had some of these women tell me horrifying tales of what their husbands expect. Like — sparkling windows! Polished floors! Clean sheets EVERY week! One woman even told me that her husband doesn’t want her to go away again (she’d gone for a short vacation with friends, just over the weekend) because he couldn’t eat anything but her cooking.
Well, if I had a husband like that — actually, I wouldn’t. Because he would have divorced me minutes after I removed both his testicles.
So in that respect, I know that I’m fairly fortunate to have a husband as understanding as DAH. (Excuse me while I go wipe tears of laughter from my eyes.) And truly, I have learned, after 18 years, a few things about the man. It’s not merely that he sees the mess and chooses to ignore it because he loves me and doesn’t want me to work too hard.
It’s that he doesn’t mind it. And I guess I don’t know how I can expect a man who thinks the crusty yellow rings around the toilet are decorative accents to consider cleaning them up. But the thing is — I do mind it. And it weighs on me, until I just can’t stand it anymore and then I go on a mad cleaning frenzy. And you know what?
He doesn’t comment about that, either.
So I give up. We don’t speak the same language, and obviously we don’t see the same pictures. It’s like a Rorschach test — shown the same drawing we would see different things. I already know that I see the glass half empty, he sees it half full. So I see the house on the verge of being swallowed into the black hole of its own chaos. He sees it as “charmingly lived in.”
DAH’s a great guy. Really. And he has been allowed to keep both of his testicles. And that’s saying a lot, because I’m fairly picky about that sort of thing. So I’ll keep him. And I guess I’ll keep trying to teach him my language, and he’ll keep trying to teach me his.
(The language of love, I can just hear him say. Accompanied by adolescent giggles.)
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