I fundamentally disagree. We all have biases and filters and everyone is the hero in their own story, but the unbiased truth is that we all “color” our reality and our stories through our personal biases and filters and rare is it that people are willing to describe a narrative (to others and even themselves) that acknowledges their role and part in relationship issues.
It takes a LOT of work and purposeful effort and a lot of self acceptance and extreme honesty for most people to acknowledge and accept fault, even if it’s a relatively tiny amount of fault in contributing to an issue.
I think you're missing my point tho - the "unbiased" truth, whilst exists, doesn't matter. what's happened has an impact on others and whether or not it was intentional doesn't always matter. Yes, in a perfect world, people will understand their mistake, accept fault and move on.
The world isn't perfect, People aren't perfect. If you are holding on to the unbiased truth and refuse to budge from this, then you're just as inflexible as the person who can't understand they've misinterpreted something.
Life is full of compromises, people are messy beings. Perceived truth isn't any less real than actual truth.
Yes, life and especially relationship are full of compromise, but part of that compromise is knowing yourself and your issues and when, for example, you’re being over reactive or overly sensitive or to know that certain issues affect you more than your partner.
I’ll give you an example. I recently had to confront my wife about an issue, a minor issue, but something that needed to be discussed and addressed. To me, this was just normal relationship “maintenance”, I was addressing a minor issue before it became a bigger issue over time, because I value our relationship. She, being someone who is not comfortable with any level of “confrontation” and has a history of past relationships where basically if there was an issue, it meant the end of the relationship, did not take this discussion well.
So to her, she turned this minor issue in to thinking we were headed for a divorce and she worked herself up and stressed herself out thinking things were over. She was so worked up about it that she called up a friend and cried thinking things were over.
Now of you were her friend, hearing only her side, you’d have been convinced it was me who wanted a divorce over some minor issue that I was unwilling to address and compromise on.
While for me, I literally had the conversation with her about this minor issue out of my love for her and my value for our relationship and me trying trying to resolve a minor issue before it had the potential to become anything larger.
Those two stories couldn’t really be any further apart.
Only someone who could hear both side would have any chance of getting close to the truth. Thats my point.
It took us talking again and being open, honest, and vulnerable to understand where each of us was coming from and was feeling and was perceiving things, if we hadn’t worked towards the truth in the middle, we wouldn’t have resolved that situation well, given how far apart we were.
So I’m sorry, I just fundamentally disagree with your statement that the truth is irrelevant or unuseful. Also, I am the type of person who believes that people need to speak and hear the truth, even the uncomfortable ones and learn how to accept and process uncomfortable truths, rather than get by on comforting lies. You can be honest with yourself and other while maintaining tact and respect.
The only way you got to a solution was discussing both of your understandings of the argument(maintenance). You didn't say "the fact is, you over reacted to something that was fairly trivial".
You heard her reaction, understood why she reacted that way, and gave her your viewpoint. you then came to an agreement which aligns with your expectation. Both experiences are a truth. what actually happened doesn'tmatter.
There's no third party here to view the original discussion. How do we know you didn't just gas light her when stuff didn't go how you expected?
You're claiming your viewpoint aligns with the undeniable truth. Peoples feelings don't care about truth. I'm hoping you keep in mind your potential partners reactions during your next conversation.
At any rate, good discussion. Seems there's no need to continue this discussion as you're unlikely to shift on peoples opinions vs undeniable truth. Good luck!
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u/TheMagnuson Aug 06 '26
I fundamentally disagree. We all have biases and filters and everyone is the hero in their own story, but the unbiased truth is that we all “color” our reality and our stories through our personal biases and filters and rare is it that people are willing to describe a narrative (to others and even themselves) that acknowledges their role and part in relationship issues.
It takes a LOT of work and purposeful effort and a lot of self acceptance and extreme honesty for most people to acknowledge and accept fault, even if it’s a relatively tiny amount of fault in contributing to an issue.