You Don’t Understand My Perspective

I can understand the emotional logic of someone’s story and still disagree with the story itself.

Yet, in conflict, those distinctions often dissolve.

“You don’t understand my perspective” can start to mean:

“If you understood me properly, you would agree with me.”

But that is not necessarily true.

Some of the deepest conflicts occur not because people fail to understand each other, but because they understand each other well enough to know that they profoundly disagree.

That is where things become difficult. Disagreement, particularly in close relationships, can feel like rejection. It can feel like betrayal. It can feel like the other person is refusing to know us.

But sometimes they do know us. They simply do not interpret the situation in the same way.

This is where Damian Milton’s Double Empathy Problem offers a useful lens. Originally developed in relation to autism, it challenged the idea that communication difficulties between autistic and non-autistic people are caused simply by autistic people lacking empathy. Milton argued that misunderstanding is often mutual and relational: people with different experiences, embodied realities, communication styles, assumptions, and social worlds may struggle to understand one another across that gap.

In other words, the difficulty is not located inside one person as a deficit. It happens between people.

Although the Double Empathy Problem remains especially important in relation to autism, I think it also has something to teach us about human rupture more broadly.

Because in many conflicts, both people may sincerely believe they are being clear.

One person may think:

“I am giving context.”

The other experiences:

“You are justifying yourself.”

One person may think:

“I am being transparent.”

The other experiences:

“You are overwhelming me.”

One person may think:

“I am distressed and need reassurance.”

The other experiences:

“You are making me responsible for your distress.”

One person may think:

“I am trying to repair this.”

The other experiences:

“You are not respecting my boundary.”

The same behaviour becomes different data depending on the interpretive framework. This is where so many relationships begin to unravel. Not necessarily because either person is lying. Not necessarily because either person lacks empathy. But because each person is reading the other through a different emotional grammar.

The person who feels unheard may explain more. They want context to be seen. They want the full story to be held. They want people to know that there were reasons, pressures, histories, complexities, intentions, constraints, and meanings.

So they write more.

They clarify.

They provide evidence.

They try to prevent misinterpretation by adding more detail.

The person who feels overwhelmed may withdraw. They feel pressured. They feel that every response creates another wave of explanation. They may worry that disagreement will lead to escalation. They may decide silence is safer.

So they step back.

They stop replying.

They become brief.

They protect themselves through distance.

Now the tragedy begins.

The person who explains experiences the silence as abandonment.

The person who withdraws experiences the explanation as pressure.

The explainer says: “Why won’t you talk to me?”

The withdrawer says: “Why won’t you let this breathe?”

Both may be telling the truth of their experience. Neither may be accurately understanding the other’s intention.

The Power Threat Meaning Framework helps deepen this further. Rather than asking, “What is wrong with you?” it asks:

What happened to you?

How did power operate?

What threats did that create?

What meaning did you make of it?

What did you have to do to survive?

This matters because conflict is rarely just about the present moment. We bring histories into rooms.

A person who has spent much of life being dismissed may experience disagreement as erasure. A person who has spent much of life managing volatile dynamics may experience intensity as danger. A person who has carried too much responsibility may experience challenge as further burden. A person who has felt abandoned may experience boundaries as rejection.

None of this means all interpretations are equally accurate. It means all interpretations have a history.

PTMF helps us ask a more generous and more precise question:

“What threat might this response be protecting against?”

The long email may be protecting against being misunderstood.

The silence may be protecting against emotional overwhelm.

The insistence on formal agreements may be protecting against vulnerability and ambiguity.

The push for quick resolution may be protecting against uncertainty and fear.

The withdrawal from a role may be protecting against collapse.

The anger may be protecting grief.

And the grief may be protecting love.

René Girard’s concept of mimetic desire adds yet another layer. Girard argued that we do not always desire directly. We often learn what to want by watching what others value. Desire is triangular, not linear. We want objects, roles, status, relationships, recognition, or achievements partly because others make them meaningful.

This is uncomfortable because most of us prefer to believe our desires are pure, original, self-authored little swans gliding across the lake of personal sovereignty. Girard, inconveniently, points out the invisible committee of other people swimming beneath the surface.

A role may not simply be a role.

A leadership title may not simply be a job.

A company may not simply be a company.

It may become a symbol of recognition, legitimacy, belonging, proof, safety, importance, or finally being listened to.

The object begins to glow because of what it promises.

“Maybe if I become successful enough, people will listen.”

“Maybe if I build something credible enough, I will be taken seriously.”

“Maybe if I become the leader, I will finally feel safe.”

This is not vanity in any simple sense. It is often a wound seeking architecture.

But the problem is that the object can become a trap. The title that promised freedom may demand obedience. The role that promised authority may require self-erasure. The organisation that promised belonging may become another site of performance.

The professional identity that promised credibility may require the exile of the wild, inconvenient, angry, irreverent, truth-telling parts of the self.

“Congratulations,” says the status object, “you are now important. Please become less alive immediately.”

There is the irony, wrapped in a tasteful leadership-development ribbon.

There is a particular kind of pain in realising that a role you wanted has begun to suffocate you. You may have wanted influence, but not the performance of respectability. You may have wanted to be taken seriously, but not to become palatable. You may have wanted to build something meaningful, but not to become trapped inside the machinery required to maintain it.

One part says:

Be calm.

Be strategic.

Be professional.

Be responsible.

Be credible.

Do not frighten the horses.

Another part says:

Tell the truth.

Break the script.

Refuse the costume.

Stop translating yourself into managerial beige.

That second part may look disruptive from the outside. It may look angry. It may even look unreasonable. But sometimes it is the part of us still fighting for aliveness.

Not all rebellion is destruction. Sometimes rebellion is the psyche’s refusal to be absorbed into a role that has become too small for the self.

Girard also wrote about scapegoating. When tension builds in a group, the group may unconsciously locate the problem in one person. That person becomes the container for the conflict the group cannot metabolise.

It is psychologically efficient.

Instead of asking:

“What tensions are present in the system?”

the group asks:

“What is wrong with this person?”

Instead of asking:

“How have we all contributed to this rupture?”

the group says:

“If only this person would change, everything would be fine.”

This can happen in families, workplaces, activist spaces, friendship groups, coaching communities, academic departments, and small organisations with big dreams and inadequate governance. Which is to say: everywhere human beings gather and pretend they are above projection.

Of course, sometimes one person has genuinely behaved badly. Sometimes repair requires accountability. The danger is when accountability becomes containment: when a person is made to carry the entire weight of a relational or systemic breakdown.

Perhaps seeing another perspective does not mean agreeing.

Perhaps it means being able to say:

“I can understand how you experienced me that way.”

“I can see why that hurt.”

“I can see how my behaviour landed, even if that was not my intention.”

And also:

“I do not accept every interpretation you have made about me.”

“I do not agree with the whole story.”

“I am allowed to hold my own meaning.”

“I can be accountable without absorbing everything.”

That last sentence matters.

There is a difference between accountability and self-abandonment.

Accountability says:

“I am willing to look at my part.”

Self-abandonment says:

“I will accept your entire version of me so I can remain attached to you.”

Many of us confuse the two. Especially when the relationship matters. Especially when the loss feels unbearable. Especially when the accusation touches an old wound.

There is a particular grief in being misunderstood by people whose understanding mattered.

It is not the same as being criticised by a stranger.

A stranger can misunderstand you and you can usually survive it with a cup of tea and a moderately theatrical eye-roll.

But when someone close to you misunderstands you, or seems to collapse your complexity into a conclusion, something deeper breaks.

Because the hidden hope in love is:

“You will see me whole.”

Not perfect.

Not innocent.

Not always right.

Whole.

The light and the shadow. The generosity and the sharp edges. The tenderness and the rage. The integrity and the mistakes. The deep care and the defensive strategies that sometimes arrive wearing hobnail boots.

To be loved only when we are easy is not the same as being known.

And yet, there is an equally difficult truth: other people are allowed to decide what they can remain close to. They are allowed their limits. They are allowed to step back. They are allowed to say, “I cannot be in this dynamic anymore.”

That does not mean their whole interpretation is correct. It means the relationship, as it was, can no longer hold what has emerged.

This is where grief enters.

Because sometimes the loss is not only the person. It is the version of ourselves we were with them. The shared mythology. The assumed loyalty. The imagined future. The belief that love would be enough to carry complexity.

Sometimes it is not.

Maybe the most honest thing we can say in those moments is not:

“You don’t understand.”

But:

“I think we are making different meanings from the same events.”

Maybe the most mature form of perspective-taking is not:

“I now agree with you.”

But:

“I can see why this is your truth, and I need to remain faithful to mine.”

That is not easy.

It is much easier to reduce someone to a villain, a victim, a narcissist, a bully, a coward, an avoidant, an overreactor, a controller, a martyr, a drama queen, a problem.

But people are rarely just one thing.

And perhaps the work, if there is any work left to do, is not to persuade everyone to see us as we see ourselves.

It is to become spacious enough to know that we will be misunderstood and still remain intact.

To take responsibility without taking the whole blame.

To listen without disappearing.

To grieve without chasing.

To release the throne.

To stop mistaking agreement for love.

And to say, with as much compassion and clarity as we can manage:

I see your perspective.

I understand why you might feel that way.

I am willing to reflect on my part.

And still, I see it differently.

References

Boyle, M., & Johnstone, L. (2020). A straight talking introduction to the Power Threat Meaning Framework: An alternative to psychiatric diagnosis. PCCS Books.

Cheang, R., Skjevling, M., & Blakemore, A. I. F. (2024). Do you feel me? Autism, empathic accuracy and the double empathy problem. Autism, 29(9), 2315–2327.

DeThorne, L. S. (2020). Revealing the double empathy problem. The ASHA Leader, 25(3), 58–65.

Girard, R. (1965). Deceit, desire, and the novel: Self and other in literary structure (Y. Freccero, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press.