Assume Nothing

According to a popular saying, there are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.

I was reminded of this while watching one of those reality television shows starring supposed “ordinary” people living out-of-the-ordinary lives which seem to involve an awful lot of catty fighting.

This particular episode offered an interesting opportunity to view an actual argument and then get each participant’s viewpoint on what happened. I was fascinated by the inconsistencies as I watched each woman misquote their adversary and also themselves, draw faulty conclusions about the other’s thoughts and intentions, and broadly label the other’s whole personality based on this one exchange (“juvenile”, “conceited”, “self-centered”, “insane”).

Then I wondered how often I have ascribed unintentional meaning to a statement spoken to me, how much I have exaggerated when repeating stories of conflict to my friends, how many words I have misquoted to reflect what I heard more than what may have actually been said. When recounting a story with a flippant, “I can’t remember the exact words, but the gist was…..”, how often may the actual words have revealed a different intent than the “gist” I got?

My father used to say, “I know you know exactly what you think I said, but what you think I said is not what I meant.” I have been using this phrase a lot in my counseling work recently, because I am often told the details of what someone’s partner did or said editorialized with the listener’s interpretation (presented as fact) of why she did or said it. There is plenty of room for error here on the side of both the listener (misinterpreting the meaning) and the speaker (poorly delivering the message), and identifying these communication errors is critical to improving relationships.

How often do we mistake the words, or more often, the intention, put forth by partners, friends, colleagues? For example, perusing a spouse’s cellphone may be done out of “nosiness” or “jealousy”, but also out of fear or entitlement. A snippy tone directed your way may be “because he hates me” or may be the result of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. A “nag” may just be feeling ignored.

While most people do not purposely twist words and make false assumptions, it’s not very surprising that this occurs, especially in difficult situations. After all, in the heat of battle, our emotions are heightened and our natural instinct is to defend, so we may detect weapons when there are none.

Additionally, our expectations of how people will treat us can shape our view of how they actually do treat us. How many of us can laugh off a personal comment made by a close friend (“they know us so well”), while the same comment may be viewed as a personal attack by a competitive colleague (“How dare they say that!”)? Who hasn’t noticed that on days when we’re feeling happy, we are less bothered by the attitudes of those with whom we interact, be they positive or negative?

The women in the aforementioned television show had earlier concluded that they weren’t on the same wavelength and were never going to be friends, and so their every interaction contributed to the prevention of a friendship.

Finally, when we repeat our exchange to another uninvolved (though perhaps not unbiased) party, we are usually asking for confirmation of our assumptions, agreement with our conclusions, and empathy towards our reactions. So maybe we overstate the venomous tone of our opponent’s voice, or the nastiness of the words, or the frightening volume. And maybe we understate our own – just a bit.

It is possible to keep miscommunications from ruining our relationships by simply double-checking our conclusions, “asking” instead of “assuming”. When something we hear hits a chord, stop and think about what may be causing the reaction. Did they really mean what we heard? Are we making assumptions about what they said or why they said it that may not be true? Might they be under stress or have some misinformation that is causing them to react with an overabundance of emotion? Ask them. The question can be as simple as, “Excuse me, what did you say?” Or it can be more complex, like “It sounds like you said this. Is that what you meant?” It is only after we know that we have understood each other that we can respond fairly. (Of course, we can still over- or under-react, but at least we know we are reacting to the right input.)

We may never truly eliminate the third side of the story – that’s part of the nature of human interaction – but with a few questions, we can achieve a little more overlap and a lot more understanding.