Every Partnership Has a Shorthand

It’s a communication style that blends inside jokes, shared memories and all the things you know about each other without ever saying a word.

I always feel like “live, laugh, love” posters are so dorky, but I do believe that the trick to living fully in a beautiful partnership is to love through laughter…so, maybe those signs are more profound than I give them credit for. Photo by Surface on Unsplash.

You don’t want to play R. and I in Taboo. For those who aren’t familiar with the Parker Brothers original from 1989, the fast-paced party game challenges one partner to guess the primary word on their teammate’s card. But you can’t just sling verbal clues willy-nilly. The rub is that in trying to get your partner to say the primary word, you have to avoid the “taboo” secondary words on the card, too.

And if that weren’t enough pressure to put on the partner in the hot seat, there’s also a timer going the entire time. You gotta guess, guess, guess or skip to keep things moving before time runs out. Each partner has a turn to give verbal clues (gestures and miming are considered cheating) and guess the words. At the end of the round, the team that correctly identified the most primary words (and therefore have the most cards) wins.

Nothing is more boring than reading someone else recount the rules of a game, so I’ll give you an example. If the primary word that a partner needs to guess is “blossom,” the taboo words might be “flower,” “young,” “bud,” “spring” and “bloom.” For primary words like “ice cream,” you’re also prohibited from saying “ice” or “cream.” The clues must be different from any form of the word in play.

So, if I drew the card “blossom,” I might throw out clues like, “that nineties show with the best friend named Six where Joey Lawrence said ‘whoa’ a lot.” Or “the outdoor music center in Ohio where I saw John Mayer play.” Blossom!

You get the idea. Creativity is key, and it really helps to know your partner—extra points if you have a lot of history or shared memories or inside jokes, which is why Randy and I tend to dominate in this game. We can use our shorthand to avoid the buzzard that sounds when you stumble into taboo territory.

I was thinking about this today when our little Spain travel family walked by an outdoor craft and food market. One of the jewelry stands had a backdrop featuring the famous image from Girl with a Pearl Earring. I was amused.

Now, if R. were with me, we would have laughed at the same time. It’s not a funny image, so if you witnessed this, felt baffled by our weird response and wanted to know what that was all about (even though you’d probably regret asking almost immediately), we would have told you that the painting reminds us of our dog Sally. She has an odd tendency to sit awkwardly in chairs and look over her shoulder in a way would have given Johannes Vermeer a lot to work with. We find that hilarious.

And I’d hate to be dramatic (even though I love to be dramatic), but this is why I could never really be with anyone else. Not only would I have to teach a new dude how to have “super fantastic wonderful great times” in bed (yes, this is another inside joke), but I’d have to start creating a new shared language entirely from scratch. That seems like a whole thing.

I don’t have the energy to recount every one of our dogs’ highly detailed backstories from the very beginning. I don’t want to ruin the funniness of saying, “That man is in no shape to fuck a sheep” in a bad French accent by having to explain it. Besides, I also need you deadpan, “He would…eat him” to complete the exchange, and you wouldn’t know that if you weren’t my husband and hadn’t been making your way through all four seasons of The Boys on Amazon Prime.

My point is that the shorthand we create with our romantic partners is sacred. It cannot be recreated with anyone else, and it shouldn’t be. Each new person with whom we couple helps us build a unique language completely from scratch.

That’s one of my favorite things about picking a person to be with. You start cultivating a glossary of terms that only the two of you know and understand. And while you can explain many of these things to others (as is the case with the imagined oil painting of our English Pointer), they aren’t always going to totally land or make sense. You really have to be there to get it.

Now, as you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking about the shared communication you have with your own person. A lot of it, like it is for R. and me, is probably comprised of jokes and adventures (and misadventures) and stories about “that one time that one thing happened.”

But there’s also the bit where you’ve gotten to know one another so intimately that you understand the nonverbal intricacies of how your partner operates in the world. You know that this person will be immediately annoyed if someone says X or that they are going to correct someone if they say Y or that their knee-jerk response to Z is to do A.

R. knows that if someone asks me about my degree, and I say I have a bachelor’s in magazine journalism, and that person responds with “Oh, I have a communications degree. It’s basically the same thing,” that my face with contort into a tight-mouthed smile and I’ll say something blandly noncommittal like, “mmhmm.” Because it’s not the same fucking thing.

Likewise, I know that if someone starts hacking up a lung next to my husband, I’m going to laugh hysterically and he’s going to be so, so irritated because that ALWAYS happens to him. There was a period where every single time we left our house, someone would cough or snarf or lose control of their sinuses in some revolting way as soon as they were positioned within spitting distance of R. It was unreal.

It's these kinds of things that suck me into a relationship and keep me locked in. Maybe it is for you, too. Some people catch feelings after sex. For me, it’s once we’ve collected more than a handful of inside jokes and experiences where we’re both in the same space watching something absolutely unhinged go down with the understanding that we will spend a significant amount of time mocking it later. It’s all those weekend nights on the couch after the edible has kicked in and we make jokes at each other until someone loses it, and the other one wins the round. That’s the stuff that ties me to my husband, and it’s also the stuff that I go back to again and again when we find ourselves at odds.

Because of this, I wish very much for you to have a similar shorthand with your partner. I know it looks nothing like the one I have with mine, and I’m grateful it doesn’t. The little ways we make pacts with one another are so important. We shouldn’t try to emulate any other couples’ approach. Things work best when we strive to continually create and recreate our own.

Keep this in mind the next time you witness a couple vibing together, engaged in deep conversation and feel a little jealous. If you’ve done a good job of developing a shared system of communication with your person, you can find your way back to it, too. You two might not kick ass and take names in Taboo, but you’ve got game that’s all your own.

With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix

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