Mars and Venus

I like to make jokes about how different my husband and I are when we try and communicate and I frequently site the popular "Mars and Venus" scenario. But, when I think about it, its very different from Martians and Venetians trying to communicate. It reminds me of the trip I took last year to Guatemala. I really speak very little Spanish, and yet, I could generally understand, through context and through guessing and through sign language what a person was trying to communicate to me. In fact, I found the language barrier to be fun more often than it was frustrating. It was exciting to see how different emotions and vocabulary could be acted out and how many different ways there are to explain a word such as "hot"... the food is spicy, the food is warm from the oven, there is not air conditioning in the taxi cab.
So, when my husband and I try and communicate it is usually frustrating and indirect. sometimes we even try and communicate through magic and ESP. Often, I am thinking what I want him to know and I am even in other parts of the house talking to myself or the pile of laundry or the stack of dishes in the sink, and I want him to know what I want. Likewise, he says nothing and does nothing and then doesn't understand when he gets nothing...