You don’t know me

My wife, Robin, and I have been doing weekly couples therapy for the past year. We started just before the covid lockdowns hit in March 2019 and we still see our therapist together on Zoom every week.

Our goal was after over 20 years together, we both aspired to grow our relationship to a place we don’t even know exists. It will only be knowable when looking back. I want to look back 5 years from now and say we’ve grown in ways I didn’t know possible 5 years earlier.

After a year, I’d say we’ve made real good progress on it. A lot of habits we’ve developed in handling each other have been exposed and we make conscious efforts in not falling into them. Some of this work has been more painful than I anticipated. As someone who grew up traumatized and surrounded by anger, I do everything in my power to avoid creating anger at home. That is not healthy. So I must expose myself to some (healthy) anger by voicing my contrary opinion, when the “safe” way was to be quiet.

One of my biggest take-aways from this work this past year is how often Robin and I get each other wrong.

Either I’m projecting onto her what I think is in her head, or she is doing it to me.

I have come to the truth that all of us live in our own realities. The world we live in is created through our own lenses. Our lenses are created through the life we’ve lived. Our own very individual lives.

And then I came to this even bigger truth: If Robin and I are capable of getting each other so wrong at times, even after being together for 23 years, it’s only going to get worse as it radiates outside our circle.

That means I have realized that every person I know I don’t really *know*, besides the fact that they are constructed from my past experiences of them, and filled in with how I see the world. I make assumptions about them all the time. Those assumptions speak about who I am more than it does them.

If someone is slow to deal with something, I assume they feel ashamed of how they’ve handled it. Well, I’m very familiar with shame in my life, that is me talking. Their actual explanation could be as simple as they forgot.

I might be afraid of them getting mad at me over something, or not liking me because I said something they didn’t agree with. Again, those are my own worries, not what’s actually in their head.

This also means that it’s true in reverse. The person you think you know as Chris Frolic is not really *me*. It’s a cardboard cutout version of me.

I often experience the reality of when people create a cardboard cutout version of me that is the guy on stage, under the lights. The guy who has done all these fantastic things and who has awesome stories to tell. A person they can be too intimidated to even talk with.

My wife has shared that multiple friends of hers have confided in her that they’re too intimidated talking with me when they visit. They see me quiet at a social function, and don’t realize I’m actually quite introverted. Because I’m not filling the role in that moment of the guy on stage, they don’t know how to engage, or they create stories that I don’t want to be bothered.

I’m unable to control other people, but I take these lessons to heart now. I challenge the stories I create about others. I remind myself, if Robin and I get each other so wrong, then I will do my best remembering that with others.

This really applies to public figures. I remind myself I don’t really know what is going on with them. I have no idea *why* they’re doing something. Robin has weaponized my words that have come out of my mouth by repeating them back to me, even though that isn’t what I meant. If that can happen to me, I’m going to be very wary of it when I see a tweet or quote that fuels outrage.

This ultimately gives me comfort. As I remind myself more and more of this truth, it gives me more grace for others. The more I realize people only see my cardboard cutout, I know that is true both ways. I’ll try to make less assumptions and when in doubt and when possible simply ask that person what’s going on with them. When that’s not possible, I’ll remind myself I don’t know what’s going on in their head.

If you’re honest with yourself, when do those closest to you get you wrong? And if that is true, when is it true in reverse?