What words, phrases or signs do you use and how do you get your partner’s attention?
None. My wife doesn’t know about tact, or the polite white lie or anything like that. She doesn’t have time for that bullshit. It’s one of her endearing qualities.
When my wife can’t remember someone’s name, she’ll grab my hand and squeeze it with two quick squeezes “Help. Me.”.
That’s my cue to either work their name into a comment/question or, if I don’t know them, introduce myself followed by a “And you are…?”. Works pretty well all of the time.
Of course, being together so long, and loving to fuck with each other’s heads when we can, sometimes I’ll just stand there and give them my best Aussie “owzitgoin?”, and watch my wife squirm. That’s usually when the nails dig into my hand, hoping to draw blood.
Worth it.
Instead of spelling it out or code, my wife and I will use increasingly obscure synonyms to hide our conversations from the kids.
They figured out “frozen confection” meant ice cream, so I need a new one.
Chilly Cattle?
‘ice cold milk.’ Could be talking about a glass of dairy, or a delightful dessert.
Subzero dairy
A “look” is usually enough to let each other know something is up.
We haven’t really figured out how to communicate what that “something” is though and always end up more confused than informed.Shaka, when the walls fell
Mirab, with sails unfurled.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Riker, his face bearded.
Korean
Around the kids, when they were young, we used French for those things we didn’t want them to know about. She’s fluent and I don’t really speak it at all, but took it back in High School and remembered enough vocabulary to make it work.
Today, both our boys have taken years of Spanish and they speak in Spanish for those things that they don’t want us to know. LOL
Around other adults, my wife and I have a system of looks that we give each other. We can have an entire conversation just by giving each other looks.
Any fizzy lemon & lime drink is now Sauvignon.
This stems from a meal nearly 20 years ago where she asked for “Sprite or 7-Up” and was given a large glass of Sauvignon Blanc by a slightly hard of hearing waitress.
“Do we have any pineapple at home?” is our safe word for social situations when one of us needs a reason to leave a situation or change the conversation because they’re uncomfortable. I detest pineapple.
You must really dislike it - I’d have trouble not laughing if someone asked me this.
What if they go “sure, I’ll get you some”?
“Oh no, I want to bake a pineapple upside down cake later, I’m not hungry now.”
Most people around us usually get it so isn’t really a “secret” language, but my wife and I are big Simpsons fans so we talk in quotes all the time.
One that gets a lot of play is “I’m going… to… stalk… Lenny and Carl” for when we’re going somewhere but really sure what we’re going to do
Might just be cus we’re both neurodivergent, but we have a lot of non verbal cues, though he’s nowhere near as showy as I am.
Whenever I end up overstimmed and go non-verbal, I tug at his shirt gently, or paw at him. From then it’s simple ASL. For him, he genuinely just has simple phrasing or wordings that are kind of “key words” between us. The both of us are high functioning in our 20s, this is just kind of how it ended up and we’re both super not subtle about it. It’s great.
Edit: we literally do pigeon noises at each other at random. One of us says coo and the other goes roo. It’s literally just a “thing” between us and it started because of us watching pigeons together and it stuck.
Sign Language works pretty well.
We picked it up when my daughter was younger and we just kept going. Now we use it to speak to each other from across the room during loud events.
Ha! Our trick is that we’re never with company. We are very boring homebodies.
This is the way.
I just text; don’t have to worry about someone else picking it up.
Spanish
