You’ve likely heard the platitude ‘actions speak louder than words’ dozens if not hundreds of times. With this statement in mind, a reasonable definition for a relationship is a series of actions between two people with an evolving context. Titles like girlfriend, partner, and even spouse don’t actually allow anyone to love a person more. Sure, they help with expectations for the people in the relationship, and institutions like marriage have some implications for durability and convenience. But even in marriage, the relationship comes down to actions between two people.

What could we consider as the minimal definition of an action in a relationship? Based on what we’ve presented so far, a reasonable definition is ‘anything that creates an irreversible change to the context of the relationship’. In this definition, there’s no mention of an intent or aim, because plenty of things could impact the context of a relationship without intention. In fact, some of the most damaging actions to relationships might not have even had an aim to affect the relationship. For instance, one partner independently makes a donation to a political campaign of a candidate of the opposite sex and upon seeing the receipt, their partner finds themselves in a jealous rage. As a fallout of the episode of jealously, the context of the relationship is majorly impacted. Really, the one partner was just trying to support a candidate they believed in, but they forgot to calculate their partner’s jealous tendencies, so an action that had noble intentions outside of the relationship ended up having major implications for the relationship.

By this definition, words-- more specifically- the expression of words-- are certainly actions. There are countless cases where a handful of words totally spoils the context of the relationship. But wait- if the expression of words can be a powerful action in a relationship, what do we make of our beloved platitude that we opened with? Well, I think that what most people actually mean is that ‘actions speak truer than words’ and ‘louder’ is more of a catchy convenience where they mean ‘actions’ to be things that can’t be twisted or obfuscated. Unfortunately, people lie, and in relationships where insecurity is already being pressed, they lie a lot. So in those cases, the verbal communication can be more confusing than purely meaningful. Jointly, people look to actions that can’t have their meaning twisted. The best ones being actions that can be observed without awareness of anyone else observing. In those cases, the meaning is pure-- or is it?

The issue with non-verbal actions is that they leave a lot open for interpretation when there’s no confirmation or clarification. Realistically, non-linguistic actions are far less precise than linguistic ones. Ultimately, we must keep in mind that another person’s actions don’t have meaning until the observer of the action assigns their own personal meaning, which barring some confusing emotional noise, is done by assigning verbal meaning in the observer’s inner dialogue. From that angle, non-linguistic actions can be dangerous if there’s no way to confirm the original intentions of the actor. For example, consider one partner who puts a piece of jewelry that they gifted their partner for the couple’s anniversary into a bathroom drawer in an effort to straighten up. The other partner then happens upon the bracelet in the bathroom drawer instead of the jewelry drawer and concludes that the partner who placed the bracelet in the wrong drawer doesn’t pay attention to honoring the significance of bracelet and what it represents. Yes, this is a classic case of jumping to the wrong conclusion, but it also shows volatile non-linguistic actions can be. The action in this example could have been praised for someone straightening up or hated for someone not honoring significance.

People who have experienced trauma from deception might argue that it’s all about non-linguistic actions in relationships, but that’s simply not true. There are so many types of actions in a relationship and there’s no formula that results in perfect love. Every relationship context is different and merits a different ratio of linguistic and non-linguistic actions.