Get Your Words Off Me: Excerpt Twenty-Five
September 19, 2008
Without A Common Language
To make my life an adventure I moved to Israel after graduating from college, and so for much of our marriage I was living in a foreign country and speaking a foreign language with a man who was from that place and spoke that language. And while the differences from where I grew up to there were tremendous, I think that the possibility for problems exist anytime one person in a couple is from the place you live and the other is a “foreigner.” Simple things such as where to go out to eat (even what to eat), where to buy clothes, where to go to the movies, where to take night classes, what streets to take to beat traffic, what foods to celebrate with, will be known intrinsically by one, and so there will be an automatic imbalance in the relationship. This built-in asymmetry needs to be counter-balanced somehow in order for there to be equality in the relationship, because without it, there is no relationship, there is a leader and the led, there is the king of the castle and the maid. And that is not the formula for a successful marriage, at least not with me and for me.
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