Invisible comparisons
We judge our relationship against those we believe we are observing. The problem is that we are not comparing what we think we are comparing.
A manufactured yardstick
Nobody judges their relationship in the absolute. One situates it in relation to others, those of friends, of family, those staged by fiction. This comparison is permanent and rarely conscious, which makes it hard to examine.
Yet the material available is very poor. Of another relationship, one sees the public moments, that is, those chosen to be public, and one has no access to the ordinary hours or the difficult conversations.
Comparing an inside with an outside
The methodological error is the same as the one well known from social media, and it did not wait for them. One sets one's own experience, whose every hollow one knows, against the façade of others, of which one knows only the surface.
The result is structurally unfavourable. Whatever the relationship, the comparison places it below, because the two terms do not belong to the same register of information.
What others do not show
One example is enough to measure the gap: work on marital conflict indicates that the majority of disagreements in a couple are never resolved and return for years. That is the ordinary case, including in the relationships taken as models.
What one observes from the outside are therefore relationships with exactly the same perpetual disagreements, differently displayed. Knowing this does not make one's own more pleasant, but it puts them back in the normal range.
The useful comparison
Not every comparison should be discarded. Noticing that elsewhere people speak to each other differently, settle disagreements without staying up all night, or take decisions together, brings real information about what is possible.
The difference lies in what is being compared. An observed practice is usable information. A general impression of happiness is not, because it bears on something one has not seen.
The case of family models
One particular comparison often operates unbeknown to those concerned: the one with one's own parents' relationship, taken as a reference positively or negatively. It has the advantage of resting on prolonged observation, and the drawback of having been made from a child's position.
It is probably the most powerful reference, and the least examined. Stating it explicitly, even once, is often enough to reduce its hold.
Key points
We systematically compare our inside, whose hollows we know, with other people's outside, of which we see only the surface.
Perpetual disagreements are the rule, including in the relationships taken as models.
An observed practice is usable information, an impression of happiness is not.
This article describes documented mechanisms and disagreements. It recommends no position, no party and no vote, and commits to no reading other than that of the work it cites.
And you, where do you stand?
The Civix test situates your convictions on six dimensions and matches you with one of the twelve profiles, without ever telling you what to think.
Start my test