There is one really accurate expression in Lithuanian when it comes to daily communication: one person is talking about wheels (ratai) and the other about boots (batai). To make it rhyme in English as well, the second word could be replaced with “heels”. It immediately makes way more sense, right? What it essentially means is that two people are talking about things which sound incredibly similar while their meanings could not be more different. And that can be said not only about international families which need to deal with cultural differences and language barriers; it is way more universal. This is what happens in our day-to-day lives so often that after a while the only thing we want to do about it is ignore it.

Because once again the topic is marriage, one might say that the communication problems we face derive from the differences between men and women. You know, men from Mars and women from Venus. As lovely as it sounds, such an attitude is far too shallow for a lot of tastes and it basically allows us to agree to disagree in the areas where we can find peace and harmony. But in order to understand another person and their mindset we must do way more than only listen to them. No doubt you have heard that actions speak louder than words, and this is why, with enough effort and practice, you can learn to notice the signs your spouse sends and to send signs yourself without accusing your significant other of being ignorant. This is the second lesson which does not take long to get to when you are married. It also does not take long to start driving you crazy if you do not understand what is happening at home when both wheels and heels are involved.

There was a newly married couple of two rather pedantic (although one of them did not know that yet) individuals. The husband would come back home and every single day would leave the empty (and almost always dirty) lunch box in the most peculiar places: on the shoe rack, next to the couch, on the couch, on the coffee table or at the computer desk. The wife did not have a choice (or so she thought), so she kept on following the traces of the boxes and taking them to the kitchen. The end of the story? I wish it would be. She kept on nagging her husband because of that and she was GRUMPY. Of course, that made her look at least ten years older and quite similar to her mom (which her husband was clever enough not to mention). The good news is that there are plenty of tools which help to solve such problems and to understand what on Earth is happening in your loved one’s head. The bad news is that you need to use them.

The most simple tool to uncode your lover’s messages, in my humble opinion, you can find on http://www.5lovelanguages.com/ . Undoubtedly you have heard about The Five Love Languages and luckily there is an online test based on this book absolutely free to take. Could it be that easy? Of course not. The test should be taken by both of you, if you want to start changing things in your marriage and not only to observe yourself or to know what your love languages are.

As the name of the book mentioned above implies, according to Dr. Gary Chapman (Yes, I like quoting him a lot. He is good.), there are five love languages: Words of affirmation, Acts of service, Receiving gifts, Quality time, and Physical touch. And they are universal in the worlds of both men and women. Obviously, the naughty, naughty husband with his transparent lunch boxes values acts of service more than anything. After figuring this out, his poor wife rejuvenated ten years right away and now washes one box a day, which literally takes her two minutes, without complaining about that for two hours. Her husband notices and values that. He knows that his wife finds quality time very important, so he reads books with her and sometimes brings her coffee to bed on Saturday mornings. Their two-way street, where the holes are filled with drops of love, is open and functional. When are you opening yours?