I have a hard time seeing clients who don't speak French or English very well, so I can't imagine being in a relationship let alone a friendship with someone who I can't really have a conversation with.. An accent and mistakes are different, I'm talking about someone that you can't talk to properly.
I’ve actually had some pretty amazing friendships with women who didn’t speak a word I spoke. I even know a few couples who ended up marrying — and when they did, they only knew a handful of words of each other’s language. In all cases, body language did most of the talking… and honestly, that can be ridiculously hot.
That said, I’m a bit of a mind guy. Having deep, messy, complicated conversations with gestures, drawings, or “interest-based translation” is slow… but the payoff? Short-term, the chemistry — especially in bed — can be absolutely wild.
Funny enough, most of the English we actually use day-to-day is a tiny fraction of the language — studies show something like 300–500 words cover the majority of daily conversation. So in reality, even with someone who barely speaks your language, you can communicate the important stuff.
And that’s where it gets interesting — every word, glance, and gesture suddenly matters. The effort to understand each other makes everything feel more intense, more playful… and yes, the chemistry can get absolutely wild.
Ironically, the more intellectual or specialized you get, the less of an issue language really is — most relationships only use a fraction of your abilities anyway. Think about a doctor: they can’t talk to their partner about anything medical beyond the basics, even though it’s a huge part of their life. Yet somehow, relationships still work — mostly through gestures, shared routines, and the handful of words that really matter.
In effect, most doctors (and other specialists) when they date are basically using grunts, winks, and a handful of words to seduce — compared to the full scope of their intellectual abilities. All that brainpower, boiled down to the bare essentials of flirting and connection.
I was at a party and I was told afterword that a few of the well educated people got talking freely and everyone else could not follow the lexicon nor the idea jumps including our dates. And we where trying to dumb down the conversation to make it inclusive (we failed)
I think for some people its worth experimenting with and for some linguistic barriers are a real plus for relationships - but for others the work to learn to communicate without words is too much.
