Perception is Reality!

Whenever I hear a person telling me a story about some problem or issue, they will often hear me remark, "Well, perception is reality!" I love this saying, but I wonder if people really grasp what this means.



If a police officer is taking statements from several witnesses of a car accident he/she will hear different versions of what transpired to cause the accident. This makes sense to us since obviously depending on a person's view, location, or perception the observations can differ. One person might have thought one of the drivers was going to fast while another person might have noticed that one of the drivers failed to signal or shoulder check before changing lanes. Anyway when the police office is recording these statements he/she doesn't tell the witnesses, "Your statements can't be correct because they don't agree." He/she instead recognizes that for each witness what they perceive to be the truth is really the truth for them and therefore reality or at least their reality.



So what if we apply this same theory to relationships...



Say a guy comes home late from work one day because he decided to stop and get his watch fixed and finds his wife or girlfriend isn't home. He might be surprized and wondered where she was. He might have expected her to have dinner ready for him since he planned on going to the gym after dinner for a work out. He might have wanted to talk to her over dinner about a new position at the office or about their upcoming summer vacation. Anyway, he came home expecting one thing and then found another, so he is frustrated or upset.

When his girlfriend or wife walks through the door, instead of giving her a kiss and asking her how her day was, he asks her in a demanding voice where she has been. This obviously doesn't impress his woman because now she is defensive. She is thinking to herself, "Screw you!" But, she instead replies, "Well since you were late, I decided to be the responsible one, so I have been getting groceries, filling up the car with gas for our trip and taking your shirts to the dry cleaners." Now they are both angry and they both think the other person is wrong and should apologise.



But...really neither person is wrong. They are both right. The guy perceived the situation to be one way and so it was...he came home expecting his wife to be there and she wasn't. The wife perceived the situation to be another way, but it was still true for her...she was at home waiting for him and was hoping they could go to the gym before supper and then stop on the way home to pick up some take out, but she became tired of waiting for him, so she decided to run some errands on her own.



Since both of them are right neither of them are going to want to apologise, so instead of continuing the fight...they must recognize that every one's perception is going to differ and while you don't have to say sorry, you do have to say something like, "Gee, I am didn't expect you to perceive the situation this way when my intention was to try and help you out by picking up the groceries so we wouldn't have to tomorrow before our trip." He then could reply, "Well, sorry when I came home excited to talk to you about my job and found you not home, I was disappointed and thought you went to the gym without me."

I know it's not a simple as this, but I do think if we communicated better with our partners and tried to understand their perception of a situation, we would discover neither person was trying to be bad or evil, but in fact was just uninformed and then made assumptions based on what they perceived as reality.

Just a thought!