Separate Realities: Understanding Differences
This is an extract from The Secret of Love: Unlock the Mystery, Unleash the Magic by Lori Carpenos and Christine Heath
Erika and Tim
Just like most relationships, the way my husband, Tim, goes about a lot of things is very different from the way I go about things. My way of doing things always looked right, and his way looked wrong. I had to tolerate it, tolerate him and just try to have a good attitude. It seemed to me that my ideas were solid, ironclad truth. It was that way with everything, not just the big things but about the little everyday things.
For example, the way Tim loaded the dishwasher didn’t make any sense to me. He’d put things in haphazardly, whereas I was raised to be as efficient as possible so you could fit the most number of dishes possible. So he’d load it, and then I’d end up rear-ranging everything before it was ready to go.
Without a doubt, it looked to me like my way was the better way. Tim’s way was inefficient, and therefore bad. Yet as my understanding of the Principles grew, I found myself starting to question all the ideas I had about what seemed right and true. I started noticing how self-righteous people can get during an argument, but then when they calmed down, they’d see how skewed, irrational and unreasonable they’d been without realizing it. I started to become more humble and cautious when I’d feel my own self-righteousness set in.
Up until that point, Tim was the one who was turned around and needed to see and do things my way. But as I caught on to how Thought works, it started to look like maybe I was the one that was backwards.
Several things changed for me when I started questioning how I saw our differences. The first change I saw in myself was that the tension and the edge around our differences started to fall away because my mind wasn’t wrought with irritation and judgment, and my mind was more open and free.
Here’s how that played out when I took a fresh look at the dishwasher issue. When I thought about the fact that he loads the dishwasher in a completely different way, the first thought that hit me was that I think way too much about how dishwashers should be loaded. I would love to be as free as my husband and just put things in there and start it and not have to think so much. I would love to not have to think so rigidly about efficiency so I could be more free-spirited and have less on my mind. It was no mystery that overall in his life, Tim was more easygoing and relaxed in all the ways that counted. I wanted to be more like that instead of trying to get him to be more like me. I realized that he seemed to share my values; he just had the perspective to be able to balance efficiency with being easygoing, which was what I was missing. Instead of feeling condescending toward him, I started appreciating and admiring the things he had that I didn’t. I began realizing those differences are evidence of ways that I could learn from him, and it made me value what Tim brings to our relationship in a whole new way. This brought a level of gratitude and respect into our relationship that was deeper than we’d ever had before.
“Reflection
It sure helps to know that everyone lives in their own Thought-created reality. When people don’t understand separate realities, they think that everyone sees the same thing. They frequently ascribe motives to another person’s behavior. They take things personally and feel criticized, angry, and hurt by the actions of others. A lack of understanding of separate realities can cause relationships to spiral downward, which generates misunderstanding, anger, and resentment.”
This is an extract from The Secret of Love: Unlock the Mystery, Unleash the Magic by Lori Carpenos and Christine Heath
Pg. 67,68 & 69
Lori Carpenos, LMFT is a marriage and family therapist with a global online practice, based in West Hartford, Connecticut, USA. She has been passionate about sharing the three Principles that explain many life mysteries, and all psychological experiences, as articulated by the late Sydney Banks, since 1985 through writing, counseling, mentoring, and facilitating “Mystery School”, a six-week online course to study the teachings of Sydney Banks. She is the co-author of “The Secret of Love, Unlock the Mystery, Unleash the Magic”, with Christine Heath; “Healthy Thinking, Feeling, Doing From the Inside-out,” with Jack Pransky; and the author of “It’s an Inside-out World”
Lori also offers a variety of 3 Principles retreats in the Dominican Republic
