ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, we explored the value of uncovering hidden issues, especially fears and desires that power negative interaction cycles and cause marital unhappiness. This often allows us to discover idiosyncratic or person-specific meanings of events that evoke conflict between the partners, as we saw with Dick and Tina, who became deadlocked over celebrating Christmas because the holiday had different meanings for each of them. The meanings things have for us are often incompletely known to us (because they are unconscious, disavowed, or “unformulated”) or are assumed to be universal (because they were learned in childhood, because they are embedded in cultural givens, or because we have never met anyone who thought differently) and, therefore, frequently cause puzzling discord between partners. In this chapter, we look at this problem of divergent subjective experiences more closely.
