A Dictionary of Love

0:02 In our worst moments in couples, we tend to assume that our problems are unfixable, that we simply don't get on, that we're the wrong sort of people to be together. What we tend not to do is imagine that we have a problem of dictionaries, that our fundamental problem is that our partner and ourselves are beneath the surface following dictionary definitions that don't align. We're squabbbling because we don't understand what the same things mean for each one of us because we're using the same words and terms without realizing that each of us has an entirely different understanding of their natures. We imagine as we try to live with someone else that there isn't a gap in the way that we both define concepts like for example delays in answering a

0:50 message or leaving the bathroom messy or spending time with friends. It simply doesn't occur to us who've been wielding certain phrases and concepts one way since early adolescence that we might have encountered someone who sees them very differently. It appears self-evident to us that a messy bathroom means a bathroom whose owner has shown us no respect, who's vicious, unkind, uncaring, and out to harm us. It's totally natural, as natural as our understanding of the word chair or glass. That spending time with friends means a chance to rejuvenate, to take the pressure off a couple, and achieve some necessary distance before returning to coziness once more. What we're

1:35 forgetting in all this is the noble and arcane discipline of ethmology. That is the history and genealogy of language. It's the people we call ethmologists who will carefully trace where a given word comes from. They will tell us for example that window comes from the old Norse word vindalga meaning windowi or that clue comes from the Greek clothos meaning ball of thread after that thread that Ariadne gave Thesus to escape the labyrinth. Standard ethmology is all very well but what we need as much if not more of is a form of emotional ethmology. That is an effort to trace back words and terms to their sources in the lives of lovers. Couples need to see

2:23 that they're fighting very often simply because they are using the same terms in different ways. A habit of leaving a bathroom in a mess may not in fact in one's own dictionary stem from any kind of desire to harm. Maybe it just emerged from a wish to escape a punishing parental figure who, while emotionally very cold, placed undue and unwelcome emphasis on etiquette and order. Just as in a neighboring dictionary, the very same phrase might stand for shallowess and selfishness, for imitating the behavior of a despised stepparent, it might be an emblem of disdain and cruelty. All this points to what we should do in our arguments before we imagine what our partner means. Before we settle on an explanation that involves insult and a desire to harm, we

3:10 should always take care to remember dictionaries. We should pause our fights to wonder if our partner isn't simply mad or evil. They may just have a different dictionary definition in mind. We need to do one another the favor of some dictionary work. We should ask one another what a term means and then analyze how it came to have this meaning for them. We may not be beyond comprehension at all. We may not need to split up. We just need to understand what is in our respective dictionaries and