Negative Perception Can Be Killing Your Relationship
While there are many ways to destroy a relationship or marriage one of the most difficult ones to combat is Negative Sentiment Override. Much research has been done on this subject and many people either don’t understand it or realize that they are stuck in a pattern of thinking that is destroying their relationship with someone that they once valued or loved.
When we are in an intimate relationship or a marriage we need to understand that there are not simply two people involved but rather there are four. Yes, I know it may sound crazy but really there is the real you plus the you that lives in your partner’s head. And it isn’t he same for your partner as well. The real them is there in front of you and then the is another version of them that lives in your head.
These other versions usually show up when we have an argument with our significant other. Normally this is a minor issue and if we have learned how to fight better we can quickly recover. However when you’re stuck in Negative Sentiment Override, you know more about the other spouse that lives in your head than you do about your real partner. These conversations that we have about the spouse in our head keep us in an overactive and a reactive state.
When Negative Sentiment Override overcomes us we make assumptions about how our spouse will think, feel, or speak to us and we lose our connection to our real partner which further degrades our ability to truly understand our partner and communicate effectively with them.
So how did this happen and when did it start to happen? To begin to understand this we need to realize that the version of us or our spouse that lives in our heads are typically exaggerations of the real version of us from a time when we were at our worst. Over the years we have, in a way, helped our spouse create this version of us that they are now stuck on. Evolution has also conditioned our brains to care less about personal happiness and more about our own personal safety and surviving to the next day. Having to focus on safety or survival creates a rather large and challenging barrier to relationship happiness as your brain is always on the alert for any real or perceived threats. If, over time, you erode your spouses happiness in the relationship then their brain will instinctively start to perceive you as a threat. Whether or not you truly are a threat to your spouse is not really the issue. The issue is that they now have this version of you in their head that will now guide them. Our minds are reactive because that is what has kept our species alive for as long as we have been on this planet.
Back several hundred years ago it was more challenging to survive to your mid-thirties and your forties seemed like a pipe dream. Now that we have a much longer life expectancy and we are getting married for reasons other then wealth or to produce an heir to our kingdom this survival technique doesn’t serve us as well.
So how does one overcome Negative Sentiment Override and can it even be overcome or is the relationship destined to fail regardless of the amount of effort you put in to overcome it? The good news is that it can be overcome but requires us to become vulnerable and take a few risks all of which flies in the face of self-preservation. Now, by all means, insert your favorite Brene Brown quote on vulnerability here but you must begin to release your grip on the version of your partner that you have in your head. You need to not only realize but believe that your partner is a living and breathing human being and as such, they are capable of not only growth but real and lasting change. You and your partner need to find ways to turn towards each other and reconnect. This may seem like an impossible task and a journey that is only full of hurt but as long as you are stuck and focused on the version of your partner that is in your head you will never notice anything positive that they are saying or what they are doing. The more negativity that is present in your marriage, the harder you will find it to overcome the partner in your head. Negative Sentiment Override allows you to easily enter conflict mode but makes pulling out of it seem like you are sinking fast in being. More often then not this will cause you and your partner to become distant, withdrawn and we tend to isolate ourselves from one another because we are paying too much attention to the partner in their head.
