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  • Theyve goneand what we need most of all to understand is why? What is striking

  • is that, despite what friends and well-meaning acquaintances tell us, we already know. It

  • is us. We firmly and naturally assume that the explanation is primarily to do with us

  • and our miserable failings. Theyve gone because we weren’t good enough. They got

  • to know us better than almost anyone has ever doneand then, inevitably, felt horrified

  • by the truth. It’s not the relationship that failed: we failed. Butcounterintuitively

  • what seems most obvious to us in our hearts might not actually be true in reality. There

  • is a famous experiment in the history of psychology which pinpoints our tendency to project: that

  • is, to read decisive, clear explanations drawn from our minds into what are in fact ambiguous

  • situations in the world. The Thematic Apperception test, as it’s technically known, was developed

  • in the 1930s by the American psychologist Henry Murray. It presents us with images of

  • peopleand asks us to say what’s going on in them.People tend to come to quite specific

  • conclusions. For example: She’d fed up with him; he’s weak and a

  • bit boring and she’s just told him that their relationship isn’t working and that

  • she’s leaving. He’s just told her they have to break up

  • and the reason has something to do with their sex lives. He’s not as fulfilled as he wants

  • to be. It seems to be about his parents. She wants

  • him to take more distance from them. If he doesn’t, she can’t be expected to stay

  • around foreverThe power of the experiment derives from the

  • fact that the image has, by design, no precise or definite significance: theyre just actors

  • asked to assume certain poses. The stories and the meanings come from us. This is often

  • exactly what happens around our own heartbreaks. We may never actually know precisely why the

  • other person left us. That shouldn’t be surprising. However well we know someone,

  • they are never fully transparent to us. What they say may only be a part of what’s really

  • in their minds. Their deeper motives will remain obscureperhaps even to them. Were

  • presented with a facttheyve left usand onto that we project a meaning. But

  • the meaning we give to that fact comes, in large part, from us. Holding onto the idea

  • that we don’t actually know something is an underused and powerful skill. At one of

  • the foundational moment of philosophy, in ancient Athens, Socrates argued that a huge

  • component of wisdom lies in our capacity to accept our ignorance in certain situations:

  • the wise are those who know that they don’t know’. This recognition of not-knowing,

  • and the reminder of our tendency to project, may be helpful in easing us away form the

  • more catastrophic and self-incriminating interpretations of a break up. The lover who furiously told

  • us they never wanted to see us again mayin the hidden recesses of their soulhave

  • been actually thinking: ‘I’m so sad this didn’t work out; I wish I could find a way

  • to make this work; you are so lovely in many ways, but there’s something desperate in

  • me that’s turning away from your offer of love’. The person who coldly texts us: ‘that‘s

  • it, I’m outmay behind the scenes be weeping at their own sense of loss and failure

  • rather than (as we imagine) gleefully celebrating the end of their over-extended encounter with

  • us. The person who says: ‘I wish this could work but just for now I’ve got to concentrate

  • on my careermight actually be quite sincere rather than (as we might darkly suppose) putting

  • a polite cover over their contempt for us. The acceptance of ambiguity is liberating:

  • were free to recognise that the ending wasn’t necessarily all our fault; that there

  • may have been forces at work other than our own inadequacy. Were still very sad, but

  • the target of our misery is a little more bearable: we can focus on the deep, sorrowful

  • strangeness of love and loss rather than suffering an extended excoriating confrontation with

  • our own inadequacies.

  • To learn more about love try our set of cards that help answer that essential question; "Who should I be with?"

Theyve goneand what we need most of all to understand is why? What is striking

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他們為什麼要結束這段關係? (Why Did They End the Relationship?)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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