The Language of Love

You may have heard the beginning before, but please -- keep reading til the end.

Yesterday a guy friend IMed me with the greeting, "I will never understand the female mind." And to this I replied, "Honestly, me neither." I tried to help him, but who knows if any real progress was made.

The American guy here and I fight all the time -- more than I've ever fought with anyone. It's ridiculous and the "discussion" is always the same. It begins:
"Wow she's hot" or "You look good in that" or "Why don't you drink some more alcohol?" or (so classy), "There's my baby's mamma."
Then, I respond with something resembling the following: "Could you save those comments for your guy friends? I'm not a guy. You sound so chauvinistic."
He says, "I'm not chauvinistic. You're a femme-nazi."
She says, "All you look for in a woman is her body. I feel like you don't respect me at all. And if by pointing that out, I become a femme-nazi, that just proves my point even further. Let's not hang out anymore."
He says, "Fine."
And I feel relieved and happy for a little bit.
Until we start hanging out again.

Real mature, I know, but it goes on and on like this, again and again. Finally tonight I said,
"If there's something you want to tell me directly, then say it. Get it off your chest. I'm tired of this pent-up hostility and I'm tired of arguing with you. What's the problem?"
Guy responds with muddy words (so this is not a direct quote), "You accuse me of things when you don't really understand. I'm not chauvinistic. But I like you and you don't like me back. So how do you expect me to act around you?"
Me: What? Like me? What are you talking about? If I don't want to date you, that means you should pare all women down to their boobs? And anyway, at what point in your ramblings about how hot other women are was I supposed to know you like me? You brag about how you have more romance in your pinkie than most men have in their entire bodies -- but trust you, you haven't worked your magic in Japan because nobody has been worthy of your sparks -- where in this was I supposed to realize or understand or guess that you liked me? Or that you were ever trying to show that you liked me? And why on earth do you like me if we're always fighting about such fundamental ideas?
I think all this, but I say only, "I don't understand what you want."
He says, "I guess I don't either."

And so it goes.

A friend of mine in college studied abroad in South America. One day, he sent an email declaring his love for a Chilean girlfriend. Funny thing was, they could barely speak because of the language barrier, and he was the first to admit it! At the time, I laughed at him. "He thinks he loves some girl he can't even hold a conversation with." But really, how much better do I understand a guy because we can talk to each other? Most likely, the level of communication stays the same, regardless of who is saying what and how. Guy will always speak "guy," and girl will always speak "girl," and this talking at each other will be labeled "communication."

Even if you can both write in Kanji, you probably can't speak the same language. Suddenly the term "language barrier," at least in matters of the heart, doesn't mean much to me anymore. People think English is hard because there are many exceptions to the rules. But love doesn't have any rules -- there's no foundation from which to deviate.

I think I'll be alright with Japanese.