What do differences mean in a relationship?

The wife turns to her husband and says, “Look how pretty these trees are!”

The husband replies, “Really?”

The wife gets upset and says, “How come you never agree with what I say?!”

And the argument begins…

Does this dialogue sound familiar to you at all?

While it might seem strange that couples would argue over how pretty some trees are, this was a real-life example given by an experienced therapist Ron Richardson at a recent conference with Living Systems Counselling.

We often get triggered when differences come up in a relationship and sometimes it doesn’t matter what those differences are. A conversation can blow up because we don’t share the same life values, but it could also be as simple as not having the same appreciation of trees.

We get triggered because we often implicitly have this equation in our mind:

Differences = You don’t love me

If we can learn to separate our perception of our partner’s love from the differences that we have, it will be a lot easier to manage those differences. Remember…

Differences ≠ You don’t love me
Differences = Differences