Magdalena Hoeller

On a cold but sunny autumn afternoon, I was riding on the back of my husband's motorcycle, just cruising along one of our favorite routes around Newcastle.

It was a pretty fresh day, so we were all rugged up in our protective gear.

At a set of red lights, my husband lifted his visor, and he said to me, Hey, come feel my handles.

So naturally, I reached for his hips and gave them a playful squeeze and said, These handles are perfect, baby.

What he, of course, meant was his heated motorcycle handles, not his love handles.

Yeah, a classic and genuine misunderstanding.

And luckily, we both have good humor.

Otherwise, this could have ended in an argument.

But interactions like these happen every day in intercultural relationships.

This is not unique to us, of course.

In fact, one third of Australian marriages are intercultural these days, according to the ABS, which means we've never been more intimately connected across the globe than we are right now.

What I didn't tell you so far is that I'm from Austria, so my first language is Austrian German, and my husband is from Australia, so he speaks English.

So these kinds of conversations, misunderstandings, long explanations of jokes and words shape our relationship.

By a show of hands, who in here knows at least one intercultural couple?

Maybe it's even you.

Yeah, exactly.

Now, in my research with intercultural couples, I found many beautiful aspects of having two different languages amongst partners, but also quite a few challenges that monolingual couples don't necessarily have to face.

Let me ask you this.

If you cannot flawlessly communicate with the person you want to be closest to in this world, how does that affect your relationship?

This is what I'm going to answer for you today.