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The 5 Love Languages is not supported by any scientific research, basically, it's a load of bollocks. It's just the latest self help book to be in vogue.

Yes, I second "The 5 Love Languages". Very good lessons for how to strenghten important relationships in my life. Before, I didn't realize how much more I prefered one kind of love language over some others.

> communication requires shared context

this is pretty grandiose. its beautiful, but if youre trying to help people communicate, "adjust your models of reality" isnt actionable advice.

the core problem you allude to is that communication is built on unexamined assumptions, but this does not require a cosmic realignment to get better at solving. a perfect example of this is trying to make your partner feel loved. if you tell your partner you love them but that doesnt make them feel loved, you are miscommunicating. i am regurgitating the words of "The 5 Love Languages", by Gary Chapman. it is a short, cheap, book that will change your life and upend your cosmos : )

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Languages-Secret-that-Lasts-eboo...

no affiliation, except that i bought and read it and it made me a better person.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. I'll throw in several more favorites that have changed the way I think over the years, in no particular order:

* The Righteous Mind - Jonathan Haidt

* 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey

* The Emperor of all Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee

* The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

* Getting Things Done - David Allen

* The Worthing Saga - Orson Scott Card

* The 4-Hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss

* The 5 Love Languages - Gary Chapman

* The Total Money Makeover - Dave Ramsey

So many, and I wish I could write a long paragraph on each, but I'm unfortunately short on time. I'm posting any in case just one person who hasn't heard of those checks them out and gets value:

-Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hosfstadter)

-The Mindbody Prescription (John E. Sarno, completely cured my long-term crippling RSI that kept me from using computers and was ruining my life)

-Feeling Good (Dr. Burns, cognitive therapy mostly centered on depression, but I want to learn about this before I have depression so that I can avoid it and do 'maintenance' on myself)

-The 5 Love Languages (Gary Chapman, made me understand a lot more about how people express and receive love, and the problems that arise from mismatched languages in relationships)

-Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman (you guys probably already know this)

-The Blank Slate (Steven Pinker)

-The Snowball (Warren Buffett biography)

-Influence (Robert B. Cialdini)

-Your Money or Your Life (Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin)

-When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace (Le Ly Hayslip)

-The Halo Effect (Phil Rosenzweig)

-The LessWrong.com sequences on rationality

This is an extremely important topic to which I had been given far too much useless or unrelatable advice for a very long time. I think in the language of the OP the goal of relationship partners, should be to strive towards the top right corner of that map, to become coordinators.

Like yourself, I have a partner that is a different culture than myself; I leaning towards A, and them to B.

It was a constant source of bickering for us because I'd never be able to express myself fully without affecting her negatively. Being too considered in my speech, would keep them calm but would leave me dissatisfied, which would make the next one worse. During fights, only after being sufficiently emotionally exhausted we'd come to accept each other's "incorrect" perspective and move on. We share a lot of values, so that isn't hard and we were quite happy on the whole.

There was a point about a year ago where some acute external stress started to weigh down on us, and we were increasingly getting worse at resolving those arguments. I tried to take their feedback at face value, by trying to be accommodating of their stated needs. But that too failed miserably. In fact I was now being similarly emotionally devastated, for things that usually would be a quick quarrel. Because of all the extra emotional work I was trying to do, and didn't have the stamina for.

We recognized it was a deteriorating condition, so somehow my partner brought up the idea of going through The 5 Love Languages book. Neither of us had read it before, but the audiobook was on YouTube, so it couldn't hurt. Long story "short", that book has revolutionized the way we communicate. It was night and day difference within a week, and we haven't been happier.

My key takeaway from the book wasn't that we were different cultures (while that is still true). It was that there are some very simple but powerful techniques, that allow you and your partner to store much more emotional energy in your reservoir (book calls it "love tank") so communication mismatches can be handled much more gracefully. In the end, we can approach disagreements in either style, depending on subject.