the love of language and the language of love

I was with a girl where the language of love between us was honest-to-goodness just English. We would talk about stories, romantic heros, pathetic fallacies, ballads, poems, you name it. We turned situations over out loud ad nauseam. She felt a passion for writing nearly unmatched. We sat together under the falling leaves after class, the concrete benches arranged in an amphitheatre, echoing the literature we discussed with each other. I attended her poetry club and watched her perform, performed myself, took part in the indulgence of the spoken and written word.

I was with a girl where, among other things, the language of love turned out to be teamwork. I have seldom worked with someone so reliable, communicative, prompt, and straight up intelligent. We studied together, built projects together, played sports together. It felt like we were wingmen (not the kind where you help someone talk to a girl, but the kind of camaraderie you feel with your WCS or other copilot as you navigate dangerous situations with finesse). Obviously there was much more to our dynamic than this, or else I wouldn’t have crushed on her, but there was a pleasure I felt when we scored as a result of precise comms. Seems meaningless, but that same pleasure echoed into how relieved I would feel when she was straight with me and said exactly how she was feeling. It echoed into the confidence with which she held herself. It evolved into a love language of secure camaraderie; I felt like her equal as a friend, a supreme sense of the fun of sport.

I am with a girl where the language of love, also verrry much among other things, is often touch. I too am a touchy person, but I talk a lot, my brain fills the silence with questions, answers, and musings as I play the inside of my brain out loud. Her brain is just as noisy but she keeps it in, feeling more comfortable with the silence, listening, brief answering approach. More often than not, I can feel the palpable draw of our bodies, she cuddles my sides as I drive us to a new future. We caress each other as a default, the gravitational pull of contact silences our words. They are spoken enough to communicate every individual thing, which satisfies most people, but their deepness seems to be matched by our physicality.

It’s both comforting and uneasy. I have so much to say but I don’t want to say it, and I’m learning how to read the words of her hands and face. She looks at me and smiles a paragraph, but sometimes I wish she would read it. When she does I feel like it always ends on a cliff. A precipice she declines to descend, expecting my mind to fill in the blanks. Yes, dear, it can, but I wish it didn’t have to. Her words are like sweet marmalade slowly dripping from a jar of unknown size. I treasure each drop like it was the last, hoping that I’ll get more. The mystery of her psyche reveals itself in ways I’m not used to consuming, yet I’ll try for her to learn them. My body has been enjoying the sweet touch of boundless affection, but my mind is still left ajar, half finished musings coat the doorframe, a trail of inferences leads in and out. She finds explaining things uncomfortable, like a burden she has to carry for me, which interests me because most people enjoy talking about themselves. I don’t seek “explanations” as much as I seek the comfort of knowing her thoughts, the blessing that is knowing someone. I don’t assume things about her, but it’s like I’m supposed to assume the most generic inferences in order to connect the dots. Sure it makes sense, but since when did I assume she was generic.

I love language. It’s the written, spoken, typed fabric that connects our minds together. It’s the thoroughfare of information. However you treat this highway of thoughts with your own vehicle is your choice. The language that you speak will assign certain rules, constructions, machinations, that you have to play with, but from that point forward its your turn. You play with words, put them together and pronounce them how you want. You play with meaning, how literal and figurative you want to be with people, how meaningless versus how meaningful your sentences are.

I have found that in love, these languages become even more important as your expectations of what you want to be able to say and what you want to be able to hear clash with that of your partner’s. You develop a dynamic that is uniquely your own and live that way together without thinking. You may or may not be satisfied with how it turns out, and I guess that’s just life because I wouldn’t know how to fix it in every instance. In all of the situations I’ve been in, I don’t think I’ve yet experienced the perfect love language for myself. I still yearn for this balance between expression and meaninglessness, capacity of precision and comfort of the unknown, physical and mental affection mixed with the realism of helping someone become who they want to be.

The ambitious among us have drive in their love language, but lack comfort. The poetic among us have expression in theirs, but lack stability. It feels like a losing battle where everyone is bad at something, how could I expect to be good at everything, how could I want someone who is good at everything?

And yet I do. I yearn to be the best and I yearn for someone who wants to be the best to. We all start somewhere in our journey of the mind. We have our identity, personality, prior experiences, future trajectory.

The way we love is a reflection of how we want to be loved, at least in that moment.

The words we say in love are the words we know to say, a combination of societal expectations and personal wants. We comb through the city of words we were given, and assign our own place in it, welcoming our partner into our world of words and dynamics.

But I still believe there exists a best way to do this, or at least better ways versus worse ways. I want to achieve a language of love where I don’t think about it and yet I feel satisfied all the time. It’s probably impossible, just as impossible as the marriage of two minds from different atoms and parts of the world, but it’s an ideal that I strive for, just as the other parts of my psyche I strive to improve. I want to be with someone who at least feels the same about that.

As a closing thought (which really should have been the opening thought), it’s intriguing how different we all are, or at least from my perspective, how different girls are. Girls have different wants, needs, and ways of expressing them, and being with a girl in an intimate relationship will expose you to these aspects of her psyche. You get an appreciation for the breadth and depth of the human experience. It’s ok for us all to be so different and yet so similar in other ways; it gives color to our existence on this planet.

I hold this appreciation for mental diversity just as I hold this desire for the exact headspace I want to exist with someone in. It’s like looking out from a window at the beautiful world and resigning to staying indoors that day. I love “us”, but I can only truly love a few people.

Alas, maybe the dynamic of my dreams is not really attainable from the get-go, but maybe someday I can construct it from the sum of its parts.

Originally published on Substack. View the source version ↗