How well do you really know your partner?
Familiarity can lead to unwanted misinterpretation and false beliefs
As a couples therapist, I regularly witness partners discovering that they've spent years misunderstanding each other. Recently, one partner admitted to the other, “I'm in a bit of shock about how wrong I was.” For years, they had fought about everything, and each thought the other was done with the relationship.
This despite each feeling convinced that the other knew how much they cared.
That couples therapy often involves big reveals in long-standing miscommunications is not surprising if you're familiar with the “closeness communication bias.” It describes how familiarity sets us up to misinterpret loved ones.
It's natural to think we understand our partners better than we do anyone else. But communication, even with people we know well, is infused with ambiguity that breeds misinterpretation. A 2011 study investigating closeness communication bias asked participants to communicate using ambiguous statements such as “It's getting hot in here.” This phrase could be understood as a wish for someone to open a window. Or, as a come-on. Participants predicted they would understand meaning better — and be understood better — with friends and partners. But results showed that people's understanding in close relationships fared no better than with strangers.
Overconfidence in understanding our partners has consequences. It's the birthday gift you thought your partner knew you wanted; the anger over a misconstrued joke; or the missed hint about interest in being intimate. Those smaller failures of understanding can, over time, contribute to vast chasms of misunderstanding.
With strangers, we assume we won't understand perfectly, making us more likely to ask for clarification and second-guess our interpretations. But with partners, we are more likely to confidently accept our assumptions and bypass opportunities to get corrective feedback. It's a bit like setting course in a sailboat. A skilled sailor might think their expertise reduces the need to check their course and stay attentive to shifts in the wind as they sail along. But that lack of checking heightens the risk of getting off course and failing to notice until deep into the voyage.
Correcting for closeness communication bias begins with recognizing our vulnerability to it. From there, we can take these three steps to make sure our relationships stay on course in the lifelong journey of understanding.
KEEP AN OPEN MIND ABOUT YOUR PARTNER
We gain expertise about people we are close to. But troublingly, studies show that feeling like an expert can pose a danger of becoming closed-minded and having less curiosity. We fail to learn when we assume we already know.
To counteract that overconfidence, we can look to a concept and set of practices known as “beginner's mind.”
Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen Buddhist monk, disseminated this idea outside Japan in his 1970 book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, noting that “when you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions.”
Humility about what you know sets you up to engage in new learning. Instead of telling yourself, “I know exactly what my partner means,” remind yourself, “I can always learn more.”
CONSIDER A DIFFERENT EXPLANATION
We develop strong beliefs and expectations about our partner and relationship dynamic as a result of repeated experiences. As an abundance of social science reveals, our beliefs and expectations make us vulnerable to “confirmation bias” — the general tendency to notice, prefer and remember information that aligns with what we believe. Left unchecked, we confirm what we think, even if we are incorrect.
We can proactively counteract this tendency.
Research shows that one way to neutralize confirmation bias is to pursue alternative explanations — deliberately reflecting on information and conclusions that go against what we believe or know. In experimental research, this strategy has been shown to reduce bias in social judgment more than general instructions to be fair and unbiased.
Adam Grant, in his bestselling book Think Again, advises readers to think like scientists engaged in “searching for reasons why we might be wrong — not for reasons why we must be right — and revising our views based on what we learn.”
Ask yourself, “What are other possibilities of what they meant?” and, “What could I be missing?”
ASK YOUR PARTNER DIRECTLY
It's tempting to conclude that you can step into your partner's shoes to gain insight into their perspective. But, as research shows, trying to adopt other people's perspectives doesn't necessarily help you become more accurate. We tend to replace mistaken assumptions with something equally unreliable: Most of us stop seeing things from someone else's point of view when we've reached a plausible conclusion, whether or not that conclusion is correct.
Your best bet isn't to guess what your partner might mean. It's to get information straight from the source. You can, for instance, check your interpretations by saying to your partner, “Your words don't sound mad even though your tone does. What are you feeling?” And you can explore what you might be missing or misinterpreting by asking, “What did you really mean when you said that?” or, “When you approach me in that way, how should I interpret it?”
The truth is, you may know your partner very well and still misunderstand their meaning. So, if you suggest going out to dinner tonight, and your partner responds, “If you want to,” don't assume you know exactly what they mean.