Often, when a client sits down on the couch and wants to tell a recent story about a relationship, they go back. Sometimes way back, even decades. The current event is just another brick in a wall that the client seems to carry on their back wherever they go.
In a way, it makes sense. If you want to solve a problem, it is only reasonable to track it to its beginning, take care of the roots, and let the rest follow. But the reality of relationships is often much more complicated than that. Our memories differ, and each person in the relationship often holds a different story close to their heart and can swear it is the only real truth. At times, these stories are only somewhat different, and at other times they are completely contradictory.
The Stories We Tell About Ourselves
In research about interpersonal conflict, Baumeister and his colleagues explained that “Autobiographical narratives… can be considered as the product of negotiation between actual events and desired self-concepts.” That is, regardless of whether we perceive ourselves as the victim or the perpetrator in a given situation or relationship, “people can be induced to act in ways that at least mildly contradict their preferred beliefs about themselves. Rather than regarding these incidents as proof that they are immoral, weak, gullible, or otherwise lacking in virtue, people may rationalize the events by constructing stories that are more compatible with their preferred views of themselves.”
This rationalization might help us build a story about ourselves, the relationship, and life that we can live with, but it won’t necessarily help us thrive. While we might feel that we have a good understanding of the story, how it started and who did what to whom, the other side of the relationship might hold an entirely different one.
Same Fight, Two Different Timelines
In Baumeister’s research, participants were asked to write about a time when they made someone angry and about a time when someone made them angry. When people wrote from the victim’s perspective, they described the other person’s behavior as arbitrary and hard to understand, and they added the event to a longer chain in the history of the relationship. When people wrote as the perpetrator, they described their own behavior as reasonable and framed the event as single and closed. The researchers suggest that conflicts often arise when one side holds in their anger and accumulates frustration over time until they eventually react, while the other person only experiences the explosion and sees it as an out-of-proportion reaction.
Waiting for Permission
Often, we are waiting for permission, from ourselves or from the people around us, to set a boundary that will protect us. We hold on to our story, telling and retelling it, because we think this is what will allow us to draw the line, to step back, to stop negotiating.
But we don’t have to. We can set our boundaries without waiting for an external, objective verdict that will never come and use our internal strength and judgment to decide what we are willing to accept from other people and how to protect ourselves when the line is crossed. It doesn’t have to depend on the past.
What to Ask Instead
Instead of asking “Who started this?” you can ask “What do I need right now to feel safe in this relationship?” or “What am I no longer willing to do?” These questions don’t require the other side to approve your version of the story or to allow you to act as you think is appropriate.
When the Past Still Matters
That being said, this doesn’t mean that the past has no meaning, or that the history of the relationship isn’t affecting what it is now. You can take history into account, remember things, and still act in the present without full resolution.
Sometimes, it might be helpful to let go of the origin story and stay in the present. You don’t have to ask for permission or prove you were a victim. You are allowed to set your boundaries.
