“That’s not what I meant.”
How many times have we said this?
Perhaps after a conversation with our partner, a friend, our parents, or after sending a message that the other person has understood in a completely different way from what we intended.
Because there is not always a correspondence between what we say and what we mean.
Nor is there always one between what the other person hears and what we thought we had said.
There is no direct link between what is said and what we mean to say. Words do not reach the other person in a completely transparent way. Something is lost, something changes and, sometimes, a meaning appears that we had not even anticipated.
Perhaps that is why we can talk for hours and end up saying:
—But I didn’t say that.
And hear the answer:
—Well, that’s what I understood.
Misunderstanding appears in something as everyday as talking to another person. And it is not simply a communication problem that we can solve by learning to express ourselves better.
There is something more.
Lacan put it in a way that can feel uncomfortable: “You always know what you said, but never what the other person heard.”
When we speak, we are not completely in control of our words. Sometimes we say something we did not intend to say, forget a word, make a slip, or discover after speaking that our words have said more —or something different— from what we wanted to express.
For psychoanalysis, this is not simply an accident.
The unconscious also speaks.
And what we hear does not reach us in a completely neutral way either. Each person listens from their own history, their experiences, desires and expectations.
In psychoanalysis, we speak of signifiers. Words are not simply something we transfer from one person to another as if they were a closed package. Each signifier takes on meaning within a history, within a chain of words and experiences that belongs to each subject.That is why, when we speak, something reaches the other person and something, inevitably, is lost or transformed along the way.
And this does not happen only with words.
We can also misunderstand a gesture, a look or a silence.
Silence can mean tiredness, anger, fear, a need for space, or many other things. Yet the person receiving that silence will try to give it a meaning. And that meaning may or may not be the same as what the other person wanted to convey
Misunderstanding goes beyond what is said.
With our parents
Perhaps one of the first places where we encounter misunderstanding is within our own family.
A child may feel unheard even though their parents have tried to understand them. Parents may be convinced that they have done everything they could, and yet their child may have received something different.
Not necessarily because anyone lied or acted wrongly.
Simply because there is always a distance between what one person wants to convey and what the other person receives.
Between friends too
Something similar happens with friends.
A message that receives no reply. A word that seems cold to us. An invitation that we interpret as insincere. A silence that we quickly fill with an explanation.
“They’re angry with me.”
“They’re not interested in our friendship anymore.”
“They must have been upset by what I said.”
But what do we really know about what the other person meant?
Sometimes we react not so much to what the other person has said, but to what we have heard.
And especially in love
In a relationship, misunderstanding can take on another dimension.
Perhaps because we expect something from the other person that no one can completely offer us: that they know us well enough to know what we need without us having to say it.
“If they love me, they should know.”
“If they really knew me, I wouldn’t have to explain it.”
“How can they not realise what’s happening to me?”
These phrases reveal a very human illusion: the belief that the other person can complete us, understand us completely and respond exactly to what we expect.
But the other person is other.
They have their own history, their own desires and their own way of being in the world.
Accepting this does not mean giving up on the relationship. It means recognising that there is a different subject in front of us, someone we can never completely understand.
And here the question of responsibility also appears.
I am responsible for what I say, but not for what the other person understood.
Each subject listens from their own history, experiences, desires and expectations. That is why what I say may acquire a meaning for the other person that was not the one I intended.
That misunderstanding is inevitable and, even so, we are condemned to relate to one another.
Because the other person matters.
Perhaps this is also part of our relationships: recognising that we will never be able to completely understand the other person and, nevertheless, continuing to take them into account.
To misunderstand one another and still not lose sight of each other.
Image created through a creative process in dialogue with artificial intelligence.
Deja una respuesta