One of the most difficult things for couples to accept is this: the other person is not wrong. They are living inside a different construction of reality.

Couples often believe they are arguing about facts. About what happened. But most conflicts in relationships are not organised around facts. They are organised around how events are perceived, interpreted, and responded to in the moment.

Ernst von Glasersfeld captured something essential when he argued that the observer cannot be separated from what is being observed, or from the act of observation itself (1995). We do not encounter events from nowhere. What we experience as reality is already shaped by how we are making sense of what is happening.

This becomes very visible in couple therapy.

Something is said. It lands in a particular way. Meaning is assigned quickly, often before either person is aware of it. That meaning shapes the emotional response, and that response shapes the next move in the interaction. The other person then responds through their own version of reality. Within seconds, the conversation is no longer about what happened, but about two different realities unfolding at the same time.

Both experiences are real in the sense that they are genuinely lived. But neither is the interaction itself. Each is a construction shaped by perception, history, and the state of the system in that moment.

This is where couples get stuck. Each person waits for validation in the form of agreement. If you would just see it the way I see it, then I would feel understood. But that makes movement impossible.

The conversation becomes a competition over meaning. Each person tries to establish their version as the defining reality. Each response defends that position and challenges the other. And because both are doing this, neither feels understood. Each feels unseen, while at the same time making the other increasingly invisible.

The problem is not that there are two realities. It is that each is treated as the only one of what “actually” happened.

What has to shift is not that one person gives up their experience and adopts the other’s. It is that both begin to recognise that their experience is real, but partial. Not false, but not complete. An interpretation organising what they see, feel, and do.

That shift has to happen in the interaction itself, at the point where meaning is being assigned and the next response is beginning to form. When that happens, even briefly, the exchange changes. The need to establish one reality over the other loosens. The interaction slows. There is a little more space before the usual response takes over.

That is where curiosity begins. Not because agreement has been reached, but because the interaction is no longer experienced as a contest over truth.

My experience belongs to me. It reflects how I made sense of what happened.

The same is true for the other person.

When that can be held in the interaction, the battle over meaning softens. And the possibility of actually encountering the other person begins.

Supporting this shift is a central part of the therapeutic process. The ability for both to hold and tolerate the idea that there can be different, equally valid experiences of the same event. And that these differences can coexist and not be mutually exclusive.