If our assumptions don’t match, we can clash with best intentions

As the phone call went on, I felt more and more annoyed.

I was talking Wednesday afternoon with a business associate and we were trying to solve a problem. We were both intent on resolving the issue and we both wanted the same outcome. But I found myself fuming.

In my frustration, I wanted to shout, “What’s wrong with you? Are you an idiot? Just let me handle this my way.”

I have no way of knowing what he was thinking — and we both remained professional and polite — but I could tell he was frustrated that I wouldn’t see things his way, too.

It wasn’t until an hour or so later that I could think calmly and rationally about the argument. I still wanted to blame him for not seeing things my way — since I was obviously right in my own mind — but I could be objective enough to realize what the problem was.

My friend and I approach the world with radically different assumptions about a lot of things. My assumptions seem right to me. (Of course.) I’m sure his assumptions seem right to him. What’s worse, I doubt he’s even aware of his assumptions.

And I found myself thinking — not for the first time — that most of our so-called miscommunication in personal relationships comes because each of us makes wrong assumptions about what the other person must be thinking.

So I unconsciously hold you responsible for what I assume must be in your mind. If I’m wrong — as I probably am — I might be hurt or angry at you for something you never even thought. And you might be doing the same thing to me.

The bad news is that I see no way around this problem. In order to stop it from happening, I would have to have access to your abstract thoughts and feelings and you would have to have access to mine. Not only is this impossible, but that would open another set of problems entirely.

If you knew the worst things I’ve thought about you — and I knew the worst you’ve thought about me, even for a fleeting second — would we want to remain close? Would we be able to love each other or care for one another? Or would we want to kill one another?

I can’t see inside your mind and heart and you can’t see inside of mine. The only way we have to bridge that gap is with words. So we have multiple problems in understanding each other, even when we both have the best of intentions.

First, we all lie to ourselves constantly. Sometimes we become conscious of a falsehood we’ve tried to make ourselves believe and sometimes we don’t. But even when we’re as honest with ourselves as we know how to be, most people are terrible about being in touch with their feelings and true motivations. And we are generally blind to the assumptions that we have been taught.

For instance, if you’ve been taught explicitly or implicitly that people of a certain ethnic group are a danger to you — whether you’re white or black or Asian or whatever — there’s a very good chance that you’re not going to be aware of how you’re interpreting situations around you in real time. (That’s not a black thing or white thing. It’s a human thing.) And you will probably assume that your interpretations are objectively right. You won’t even understand the assumptions you’re bringing to a situation.

Second, even when we are generally aware of the way we feel, our interpretations are colored by a million further beliefs and assumptions which are invisible to us. We are on autopilot about most things in life. We don’t have any choice. We literately don’t have the time to rationally work out each issue we face, even if we wanted to. We have a lot of invisible assumptions and those assumptions are rarely challenged.

Third, even when we know what we feel and even when we can do an incredibly self-aware job of knowing why we think and feel as we do, words are our best way to communicate that information to someone else. Unfortunately, words are abstract symbols to communicate abstract thoughts — and there is a lot of meaning which is lost in each link of the chain of translation. I can’t perfectly translate my thoughts into words, and then you are bound to interpret those words somewhat differently than I intended, to one degree or another.

Fourth, even if we could ignore all of the above — which we can’t — we are often scared to communicate with each other. Most of us don’t want to say, “I assume you feel thus-and-so. Will you help me to understand what you really think and feel?”

We’re afraid to do those things — when it matters most — because we are afraid of being hurt by someone else. That’s because our fears make us assume the worst about what someone else is thinking or feeling. So in the very cases when we most need accurate information, we’re afraid to ask — because we assume we’re right and we know being right would hurt us.

(Of course, there are also times when we assume the best and don’t want to know otherwise, because we would be hurt if the positive assumption weren’t true.)

For instance, if I love someone and I fear that I’m no longer loved in return, I can assume, “This person doesn’t love me or want me anymore,” because asking the question — and hearing what I’m afraid to hear — would be too painful. So I make assumptions about what your words (or lack of words) must mean. And then I hold you responsible in my mind for what I assume must be true. And you do the same to me.

We are ink blots to one another, in many ways. We sometimes see what we want to see. We sometimes see what we fear most in each other. We’re not necessarily aware of the assumptions and fears and hopes which are the lenses through which we see one another, but we somehow assume what we see is accurate.

Humans are fairly terrible at communication, even when we’re at our best. We’re prone to “read tea leaves” when it comes to other people and make assumptions — and those assumptions are very likely to be wrong.

Yet we treat other people as though our assumptions about one another are all correct.

I do this. You do this. We all do it. And the worst of it is that most people are completely blind to what’s going on.

What can we do about it? I don’t have any great solutions, but there are a few obvious things we can do to mitigate the worst of the damage.

We can each work on our own self-awareness. We can both become more emotionally aware and healthy.

We can try to become more aware of our assumptions — where they came from and why they’re there.

We can try to understand the fears we have that force us to make such wrong assumptions about each other, because those fears make us less likely to work to bridge the divide between us.

We can make a conscious decision to communicate as openly and honestly with each other as we can. That also requires us to proactively provide clear explanations for things we do and say which could confuse the people we care about.

And if you really love someone and you really trust him or her, you can mutually agree to try to assume the best of each other — and you can work to keep lines of communication as clear as possible between the two of you.

Even if you can’t communicate clearly with everybody in the world — and you probably wouldn’t want to anyway — everybody is better off with at least one emotionally healthy relationship in which truth is communicated both ways in love and empathy.

My experience is that very few people have even one relationship of that sort.

We spend a lot of time hurting people we don’t want to hurt — including people who we prefer to love — and that is one of the major tragedies of the human experience.

Fixing this one experience of life — in at least one healthy and trusting relationship — can change everything. And I believe that failing to find such a relationship of love and trust is one of the most toxic things you can do to yourself. It really is a choice, but we first have to be aware of what we’re doing.