Posts tagged with "relationship"
- Our story is the absolute accurate version
9/6/2025
Drama tends to be from all the assumptions. Like, I know that, my truth, is the right story… You were wrong. And I think it’s so interesting because people come to therapy with these faulty narratives…
We’re all storytellers. We all try to make sense of something, and we all believe that our story is the absolute accurate version of the story, and actually it’s so funny when you see couples and they experience the same experience, and they have wildly different versions.
And then there’s some part where the Venn diagram overlaps, and then finally, they can see, oh, that person’s not a bad person they were coming at it because they, in their story, they believe this. And that’s so important. So drama happens when assumptions are made. People characterize the other person’s story as inaccurate, their own story as accurate. And then there’s… no space for curiosity or connection. It’s all rupture, no repair. our-story-is-the-absolute-accurate-version.md
- Run back the tape to prove one's self-righteousness
9/1/2025
I think he’s saying one other thing, or at least I learned one other thing from it. Which is that—and this is something you learn from marriage or a close friendship—you feel an injustice, or you’re accused of an injustice, and you play back the tape in your mind and you realize, ‘Nope, I was right.’ I did the right thing, and my friend or my wife is misremembering this, and let’s bring it out in the light. Let’s play the tape. Let’s get the video. Let’s get the CCTV—the closed circuit television—of that conversation we had three weeks ago at breakfast. And I’m going to show her—she’s going to show me—how it really was.
And, that’s not available, that tape. And, your mind has—it’s an illusion to think you can bring that into the light and settle it. And, it’s one of the deepest things I think you learn from marriage, is that your self-righteousness is usually—it’s either wrong, it’s a fake memory. We don’t have the tape. And, it’s much better to just say, ‘Maybe I was wrong and I’m going to learn from it.’
But, the idea that you could just get that big flashlight and illuminate that dark corner from childhood, from two years ago, from last week, it’s just an illusion. And it’s a dangerous, unhelpful illusion for interacting with other human beings who have the same challenges you do.