What I Learned About Love from Translating Her Messages

What I Learned About Love from Translating Her Messages

Blog Article

Before meeting Elina, I thought I knew what communication in a relationship was supposed to look like. It was supposed to be easy, instant, and intuitive. My previous relationships were with people who spoke my language, shared my cultural shorthand, and understood my jokes without explanation.

Meeting Elina on sofiadate turned that entire concept on its head. She was from Latvia, and while her English was good, our deepest conversations happened through text, where she could take her time to write in Latvian and I could use a tool to translate. In the beginning, this felt like a barrier. The translations were sometimes clunky. A phrase she intended as poetic would come out as literal nonsense. But I soon realized this "barrier" was actually a gift. It forced me to do something I had rarely done before: to truly listen and to search for the intention behind the words. I couldn't rely on tone or familiar phrasing. I had to read her message, then read it again, asking myself, "What is the feeling she is trying to convey?"

This process taught me a new kind of patience. It taught me that love isn’t about perfect, effortless understanding. It’s about the effort you put into understanding. It's about seeing a clumsy translated sentence like "My soul has a good weather today" and knowing it means she feels a deep, profound sense of peace and happiness. I wasn’t just translating words; I was deciphering emotions. It was an active, conscious process of trying to connect with her heart, not just her vocabulary. Our love story is built in the spaces between languages, in the effort of a double-take, and in the shared smile when we finally figure out what the other truly means. It’s a deeper, more intentional love than I ever knew was possible.