Yesterday I set the scene that couples are not naturally designed to understand how to solve their marital problems.
Today I want to expand a little more on why.
I mentioned yesterday that nature and our educational system is not set up to help us.
You see everyones mind is creating from birth an internal map of how the world around them works.
So what we are all experiencing is our own individual interpretation of the world we are in.
We don’t ever experience the world outside of ourselves, we experience the world around us within our own minds as a construct of reality that we can make sense of.
That means when we look at a problem we can only use what is within us to translate it.
So when two people with totally different maps of experience try to solve a problem what each person is unaware of is the problem for each person is very different for important reasons.
Couple are not seeing this because they are so consumed with their own translation of events and their own emotions.
To compound the problem and their disconnect the way each person will need the problem solved will be different again causing a bigger divide and so more pressure and stress to the other.
Plus the agenda behind how the problem must be solved will again be driven by very different and unique forces as each person is responding to their unique natures and drivers.
So unless both people have full access to all this influencing data, how can each person bring to the table an action that will fit with what their partner is really looking for.
This means each person is going to be experiencing responses from their partner that either don’t make sense or they can assume means their partner doesn’t care.
This is the start of the problem because both people are totally unaware of the critical differences they must know and what those differences are for.
What this creates is a person who will over time build the wrong map about their partner and attach it to them.
They can think their way out of their own marriage and not be aware their thinking is flawed.
When you put this thinking into a couple’s problem it’s so easy to see that when one person does try to fix their problems they are naturally going to miss the point and further upset their partner.
This frustrates the fixer and can lead the fixer to give up.
In life you cannot fix anything unless you understand the problem and that is the problem.