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Mind Reading
"Stop Mind Reading!"
What we think about our partners isn't always right.
Posted August 28, 2020
Do you and your partner have frequent arguments about what each of you thinks “is really going on?”
Do you find yourselves saying, “Stop mind-reading! You have no clue how I really feel about this.”
If so, welcome to the club.
As human beings, it’s impossible to experience or witness something without immediately searching for an explanation about what or why it is happening.
For instance, if a husband brings his wife flowers, she may think, “My husband is the best husband in the world. He is so romantic. I feel so loved.” Or, on the other hand, she may say to herself, “My husband doesn’t usually buy me flowers. I wonder what he feels guilty about.”
Very different stories, right?
We are meaning-making machines. We can’t help ourselves. But the truth is, relationship problems happen when we believe that the stories we tell ourselves about our partners are always ironclad.
Consider what happened to me a few days ago.
I was on a hike with a friend when I noticed a man ahead of us on the trail stepping aside to give us space and putting on his mask. We appreciated this.
As I passed, I said, “Hi.”
No response.
As my friend passed, she said, “Thank you.”
Still, no response.
My first thought was that he was extremely unfriendly, even rude. I followed that storyline for a while and, let’s just say that it left me with a bad feeling.
And then, all of a sudden, I thought, “Maybe he doesn’t speak English.” That more positive attribution lifted my spirits a bit. Shortly thereafter, I thought, “Maybe he didn’t hear us,” a plausible thought since our masks muffled our voices. I liked that thought. It allowed me to avoid making him “a bad guy.”
I then circled back to my original, knee-jerk attribution—“He’s extremely rude or unfriendly”—and wondered why the first story I told myself about this man was a critical one. And the answer was clear. I felt uncomfortable when he didn’t respond to my greeting. It was awkward. My friendly gesture was unrequited. I didn’t like that.
The truth is, I will never know what was “really” going on with this man. All I have are the stories I tell myself. But it helps to know that when I feel triggered in some way, the stories I’m likely to tell myself about the actors in my play will probably be less than sterling.
The couples in my practice have their favorite less-than-sterling stories too—“I know you came home late because you were angry at me and you wanted to spite me,” “The only reason you agreed to come with me to my family was because you felt guilty,” or “When you’re so quiet, I know you’re thinking about your affair partner.”
And when these stories of condemnation are spoken, typically, they’re rejected outright and replaced with kinder, gentler explanations by the “accused.” But these benign accounts are discounted because most people are unwavering in their belief that only their own stories are right.
That’s one fail-proof method for getting stuck.
So, think about your life and the people in it. Are you like me in that when you feel triggered, your default story is a negative one? If so, ask yourself, “When I believe my negative stories, how does this affect me?” “How, in turn, do these feelings influence my behavior towards my partner?”
I’ve noticed that parents of young children often explain away excessive whininess or other irritating behavior with endearing stories—“Oh, she must be teething,” or “He must be tired,” or "She might be hungry.”
But when our spouses are whiny or irritable, do we ever give them a similar benefit of the doubt? Usually not. We tend to look for pathology under every rock when we offer up our go-to stories about our spouses’ annoying behavior.
Here’s a suggestion. When you tell yourself a story about your partner’s behavior or something that happened, remind yourself that it is just that—a story. And if your partner has a completely different take on things, even if you don’t wholeheartedly agree with your spouse’s portrayal of why he or she did something or the reason something happened, try it on for size. Consider it. Entertain the possibility.
The worst thing that could happen is that your story might have been accurate and that you’ve given your partner a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free-Pass. But considering the stress we’re all under these days, would that be such a bad thing?
