Do you listen to the tone or hear the lyrics of conversation?

When Adriano and I were traveling in central Chile last May we met a Romanian in the remote local of the Andes Mountains. With nothing to do past dark and the three of us being the only people at the Refugio Lodge for the night, we enjoyed a bottle of wine and hours of talking once the sun went down.

At some point the conversation turned to the topic of marriage. Our Romanian friend pondered, "How do you communicate if one of you listens to the tone of a conversation when the other hears the lyrics?" I've found myself coming back to that question many times in the last year.

I'm definitely a person that hears the lyrics of a conversation. I'll analyze every word spoken to death, if given the chance...imagining what the hidden meaning might be. Seriously, I could be a call out in a Glamour article, "When he says 'x,' he really means 'y.'" Adriano, on the other hand, is a lyrics man. The tone of the conversation predicates whether it will be a good one versus a bad one.

When you think of conversations as a song, comprised of lyrics and tone, it makes you think of speech a bit differently.

I came across an article in the Houston Chronicle this morning about an international couple celebrating their 38th wedding anniversary. When they met (she an American, he a Brazilian), they didn't speak the same language. For them, tone was all a conversation could be about. I smiled when I read the wife's take on the "lyrics" of conversation with her husband in the early years.

“I decided that, since he didn't speak English well, I would assume that if he said something that didn't sound right, he didn't mean it the way it sounded and we would talk about it instead of getting mad. He was the same way with me.”

She attributes the success of their marriage to cutting each other some slack when it came to the "lyrics" being a bit off.

In the last few years, I've tried to talk with Adriano about key words/topics that set me off. I think it's helped. I hope it's helped. But regardless, I guess I can take some pointers from Karen's advise.