LOVE, Kloudiia

I was having dinner with some friends at New York New York, a new restaurant located at City Link Mall. There is this waiter that I’d like to particularly mention. Whenever we made some requests, he gave us this puzzled look on his face. We were confused. Was he not able to hear what we said because the surrounding was too noisy? Or was he not able to understand what we said?

Janine raised her voice then in the hope that he could hear us. Didn’t work. Then I spoke to him in Mandarin, and got the same result. This went on a few rounds, until finally he got another waiter to come and help us. That waiter solved our problems instantly.

Some time before we were left, this waiter came over and apologised that his English wasn’t very good. Hoh! What a revelation! Only then we knew that he couldn’t understand much English! So it wasn’t that he couldn’t hear us afterall! Janine even started speaking to him in Hokkien and JL succumbed to using the universal language – sign langauge haha! We were that desperate! Funny.

If you don’t get what I am driving across, here is it. The problem wouldn’t have been so confusing if he had just told us he don’t speak English, and ask if we can speak Mandarin instead? If we couldn’t then all he needs to do is ask another guy to come and help us, which he did in the end, after many failed attempts to communicate.

The same theory applies to how you communicate with your partner! If your partner doesn’t understand what it is you are conveying, then it is time that you have to change your method of communicating. There are many reasons why they couldn’t make sense of what you are saying. Some of these could be they having a different model of the world, their proficiency in the language you are speaking, their mood at that point of time or even the words that you aren’t speaking but are showing through other forms like body language.

What you need to do to find out is to ask. Ask if they would understand better if you to replace a certain word you said. Find out how they would like to be communicated so you can get their attention. (Oh by the way, I have a delicious chapter showing ladies how to talk so their men would listen ;p)

Discover their lingo! Use the lingo that they understood and comprehend completely to speak to them, then you get your message across. Sounds feasible, doesn’t it?

The lingo will include all that you need to know – the words to use that will make him see the point, the tonality to use that will make him hear how you feel, the body language to display such that what you say makes complete sense with the congruency. It will be his/her lingo.  

So rather than choosing to keep silent about the miscommunication, what you should do is not to keep silenct. Open your mouth and ask, before you open your mouth to talk.

Would you like to have an effective 2-way communication with your partner and enjoy the deep bonding that develops as a result, or would you prefer to feel frustration each and every time your intentions and messages got misread? After all, we all know that you cannot not communicate, agree?