- Date posted
- Yesterday
i don’t know..😔
hello.. I have the following problem and would really appreciate a neutral outside perspective. I was on my way to a museum with my partner. I was driving and he was sitting in the passenger seat. During the drive, my partner had already noticed a woman before we drove directly past her. As we were passing her, he turned his head as far to the right as possible, toward his side window. He did not actually turn his head beyond what was physically possible. I simply had the impression that he would have liked to turn his head even further to the right if he could have. Of course, that may also have been my interpretation of the situation. From my perspective, it looked like he was looking at the woman. The whole situation probably lasted no more than about five seconds. I didn’t say anything about it at first. Later, after we had left the museum, I decided to bring it up. My partner said that he had not been looking at a woman. I initially accepted that and then asked him where he had been looking instead. At first he responded with “Huh?”, then there was a brief silence, and afterwards he said something along the lines of: “You don’t know either when or where you’re looking around in the world.” I interpreted his explanation as meaning that he simply didn’t know exactly, or didn’t remember, where he had been looking during that brief moment. In other words, he doesn’t consciously keep track of when and where he looks, so he may genuinely not be able to say afterwards exactly what he was looking at. Of course, there is also the possibility that he was lying to me. I will probably never know for certain which explanation is actually true. We have situations like this fairly often. I sometimes perceive my partner as looking at or checking out other women, while afterwards he says that he wasn’t looking at a woman. At the same time, my partner also doesn’t want me to look at or check out other men. I have talked to my therapist about this issue. My therapist advised me to stop monitoring where my partner looks and to accept that we apparently perceive these situations differently. Since I have been trying not to pay attention to or control his looks anymore, things have actually become significantly better for me. However, when I happen to notice something like this by chance, it still upsets me. What I find particularly difficult is that when I personally perceive something happening, it is hard for me to simply let it go when my partner subsequently says that it didn’t happen that way. I generally trust my partner. I am not trying to automatically accuse him of lying. My therapist also pointed out that ultimately I cannot know whether we genuinely perceived the situation differently or whether my partner was simply not being honest with me. That uncertainty is what I find difficult. I would therefore really appreciate an outside perspective on this situation. How would other people handle something like this? Is it better to accept that we may have different perceptions and not investigate it further, even though seeing a look like this by chance hurts me in the moment? Or is it understandable that I feel unsettled when I personally perceive something and my partner afterwards says that it didn’t happen?