Your Partner Wants You To Take Accountability For Something You Literally Didn't Do
What To Do When Acknowledging Their "Reality" Means Abandoning Your Own
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If you're reading this, you probably understand that your partner has their own subjective experience of reality. There's often not one objective "truth" and attempting to find this elusive truth can create gridlock and even harm.
But also...what do you do when your partner makes totally false, patently outrageous claims about your behavior? Your real-world actions!
And the behavior they're claiming you engaged in? It's not harmless. It's not trivial. Saying, "perhaps you're right and I did do that thing" (that you know you didn't do) will cost you something.
For example...
- Your partner says "you told me I was stupid," and you know for a fact you didn't. You just didn't say that! And they insist, it's not that they felt stupid or felt you implied it with your tone. They demand you take accountability for saying to their face that they're stupid.
- Or they tell you that you screamed in their face. "You leaned toward me and screamed at me," they insist. But....you didn't. Yes, you were crying. Yes, you said you were hurt. But screaming? Absolutely not.
- Or what if they insist that you're cheating on them when you know for certain you're not? And not because of semantics or different definitions of the word, but because you are simply not cheating on them!
In short...what on earth can you do when your partner accuses you of concrete behavior that is just not subjective, and they won't back down until you admit you did it, but you know you didn't?
This is a hornet's nest, but those are my specialty.