He couldn’t read her moods from her face — a quirk of his own neurology he’d explained to her early on, matter-of-fact, no apology in it. Years of practice had taught him to compensate in other ways, mostly by listening more carefully than most people bothered to.
“I won’t always catch it if you’re upset just by looking at you,” Felix had told her, the third week they’d known each other. “I need you to actually tell me. I’m not being dismissive if I miss it. I genuinely don’t always see it.”
She’d appreciated the honesty more than she’d expected to. Most people claimed to read her perfectly and then got it wrong anyway, assuming understanding where none existed. He’d simply told her the truth about his limits and asked her to help him work around them.
Six years in, they’d built their own system. She’d learned to say things plainly instead of expecting him to infer. He’d learned, in turn, to ask direct questions rather than guessing — “are you upset, or just tired?” — instead of either ignoring the question or assuming he already knew the answer.
It had made them, she sometimes thought, more honest than most couples managed to be by accident.
“I’m upset,” she told him now, plainly, the way she’d learned to. “Not at you. Just upset.”
“Okay.” He didn’t ask her to explain immediately, just sat down beside her. “Do you want to talk about it, or do you want company while you’re upset?”
“Company. For now.”
He stayed, exactly as asked, no guessing required.
Loving someone well, Priya thought, sometimes means building entirely new systems together — not despite a difference, but because of it, until the difference stops being an obstacle and starts being just another part of how you communicate.
✦ Today’s Reflection
Has a difference between you and your partner ever forced you to build a clearer, more honest way of communicating than you might have otherwise?
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Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc 
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