The Curious Case of Assumptions
It stands to reason that the longer we are in relationship with another person, the more accurately we can predict their behaviors and patterns. After many years together, a couple develops a shorthand with each other—finishing sentences and correctly interpreting an icy glare or a cheeky smirk from across the room. This inner knowing of your partner is both a blessing and a curse, as it often collides with another fundamental truth about being human: that we are unpredictable, deeply complex, and ever-evolving creatures.
One issue I see again and again in cycles of ineffective conflict between couples is the prevalence of assumption. Despite a lack of evidence, we are quick to beat the other to the punch, guessing a partner’s thoughts, feelings, and even their experience of us. With the advent of social media, we’ve been further enabled to leap to interpretation—slapping easy labels on our partners and distilling disagreements into digestible T-shirt slogans and trendy buzzwords.
In a partnership, assumptions can be the kiss of death. We end up moving into a defensive position and even tend to interrupt our partners before they are done communicating a need, a feeling or a request. We have our guard up and we are ready to defend without really getting curious about our partner and what they are attempting to communicate to us.
Despite assumptions being ineffective and contributing to misunderstanding in relationships, we continue to believe in our mind-reading abilities because assuming is meant to keep us safe. Let me explain. From the time we are infants, we are wired to judge others by their tone, body language, appearance, movement, the language they use and any other cues that will bring us closer to a state of knowing. Knowing can spare us from uncertainty and even from danger.
From the moment we develop object permanence as infants we have an awareness of the other, someone separate from ourselves, that we rely on for basic needs. We begin anticipating, reading and looking for emotional cues. Our desire to mindread and understand other people is built into our survival system. We develop what Bowlby calls “internal working models” which help us navigate socially so we can be accepted instead of rejected. Being rejected in the animal kingdom means death and to our animal brains, sometimes it feels similar.
What we learn early on and also in especially traumatic relationships sticks and so our internal biases and our own personal experience factor into the judgements we make about others but oftentimes, we are wrong.
The antidote to assuming is to get curious. If we want to truly understand our partner, the practiced ability to ask questions in an open and curious way can de-escalate conflict and even cue you into new experiences or feelings you weren’t aware of before. Getting curious requires vulnerability. You might not always hear something you want to hear. You might have to sit with that discomfort as you process that your partner is having a different experience from you, and a different experience from the one you assumed they were having. Getting curious allows space and air to flow in between us and can keep our nervous system from going into fight, flight or freeze mode. But curiosity requires us to embrace uncertainty and not knowing!
What would it be like to take your pre-judgements of your partner and your assumptions off the table for a moment? To see them as a truly unique, complex person who you can never truly know fully and to get curious about them?