This is the opposite of a long-married couple being able to complete one another’s sentences: sometimes you can’t even decipher what you’ve said to one another.
Patient Husband: Oh, I intended to take out the chicken.
Me: That’s fine. Just put it in the fridge and I’ll get to it later.
About two hours later:
Patient Husband: What are we having for dinner?
Me: You said we were having chicken, remember?
Patient Husband: No, I didn’t.
Me: You said we were having chicken for dinner, and I told you to put the chicken in the fridge.
Patient Husband: We never had that conversation.
{Note: this is the place where I actually wondered if maybe I’d been hallucinating or if an angel had taken human form to tell me to make dinner.}
Me: You told me you had forgotten to take out the chicken. I told you it was fine. I told you just put it in the fridge. You said okay. That was the conversation.
Patient Husband: Oh! Was that what you meant?
Because as it turns out, what he meant was that there was leftover chicken in the fridge that needed to be purged, and he’d forgotten to throw it out.
This is what happens sometimes in a good marriage: you think you’ve had a conversation, and yet really, you’ve had two.
