When my mom and dad first started living together many moons ago, a funny thing happened. In my mom’s Italian American household in the 1940s and ’50s, she learned that food is love and you never leave someone you care about hungry; you serve hearty portions, and if someone cleared their plate, it meant they needed more. My dad, on the other hand, born in a Jewish American family two years before the end of the Great Depression, was raised to never leave food behind on his plate—not only was it a terrible waste, but it was an insult to the chef.
A well-intended cultural misunderstanding ensued. My mom would serve up a hearty portion, and my dad would be sure to clean his plate. Thinking he wasn’t satisfied, my mom would serve him some more, and determined to respect her, her cooking, and the food, he would clean his plate, again. And again.
It took half a year, a lot of food, and some belly aches for them to finally realize what was happening. Why did it take so long? It is human nature to project our own perspective onto others. We are often blind to our own assumptions and believe that the meaning we make of other people’s behaviors is accurate even though our assumptions are based on our own frame of reference, not that of the person whose behavior we are interpreting. The effects are not always as benign and delicious as my parents’ dinner woes. In fact, in our most intimate relationships, this tendency to believe the other person’s behavior means the same thing to them as it does to us can be the source of our most painful and persistent conflicts.
The truth is that all of our romantic partnerships are, in fact, cross-cultural experiences, of sorts. We all carry our own family histories, our dynamics with past partners, our own personalities, and our internal belief systems with us like mini cultural frameworks. When we are stuck in the grips of what feel like unresolvable, painful patterns with our partners, it is very often the result of the clash between these internal “cultures.” We make sense of a single moment in time in two entirely different ways based on two entirely different frames of reference. A raised voice in one household means passionate engagement, while the same volume means anger, or even impending violence, in another. These different perspectives lead us to make disparate meanings of, and therefore have different emotional responses to, the same behaviors.
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Our “cultural” differences aren’t always as obviously visible as food on a plate or raised voices in heated interactions. Sometimes the culture we are responding to, a.k.a. the frame of reference we are using to make meaning of our partner’s behavior, is more subtle and internal.
Let’s look at the example of Charlotte, who feels abandoned by the distance Sam keeps when she’s had a bad day. When she’s feeling down, she craves his affection and comfort, and she wishes he wanted to love on her in those moments. But Sam knows that he prefers space when he’s had a rough day; he appreciates being able to process internally and not feel like he has to rise to the occasion of social interactions or obligations to others. Since that’s his internal frame of reference, Sam thinks he’s gifting Charlotte space by retreating when she’s grumpy. The distance he takes means abandonment to Charlotte and means thoughtfulness to Sam. When they try to talk about it, they both feel misunderstood; Charlotte feels hurt, and Same feels unfairly criticized.
The problem gets mired into place when each partner tries to prove their experience is the (one and only) truth. This is an unwinnable war because, most often, as long as both people are well-intended and interested in their partner’s happiness, both experiences are “right” and “true.” Charlotte feels abandoned by Sam’s distance—true. Sam feels he is showing love by giving her space—true. In Charlotte’s internal culture, love is expressed through attention—true. In Sam’s internal culture, love is expressed through space—true. Trying to find a single truth is like chasing a tail and leads to an escalation of false assumptions. For Charlotte and Sam, that escalation sounded like “You don’t really love me,” and “I can never satisfy you.”
We can’t overlay our own frame of reference and use it as a guide to make meaning of someone else’s behavior. Even the wise recommendation to ask directly for what you want isn’t always enough to interrupt these cycles if the underlying assumptions haven’t been aired out. For example, if Charlotte doesn’t actually understand Sam’s perspective, she doesn’t feel better when Sam starts coming toward her with love and affection when she is sad. “If he really loved me,” she says, “he would want to come toward me, and not just be doing it because I asked him to.”
While this feels deeply true to Charlotte, it’s actually only true from within her own personal cultural lens. In her personal culture, love is expressed through approach, but remember, that’s not true in Sam’s personal culture. These loggerhead conflicts are best solved not through simple behavioral changes, but through deep curiosity about the other person’s experience, perspective, and internal frame of reference, much like how we would approach any cross-cultural encounter. As a start, explore what different meanings you are each making of the moment that leads to your recurring fight, and respectfully uncover the beliefs that underlie your discrepant emotional responses to the same moment. And remember, the key is understanding where the other person is coming from according to their frame of reference…ultimately, from within your own personal cultures, you’re probably both right.