Acceptance and understanding

A problem that I come across, that is more common than you might think, is where somebody in a relationship is desperate to get the other person to understand their point of view.

My difficulty is in trying to get them to accept the other person may never see the situation from their point of view and that the effort of trying to get them to understand is often pointless.

What is attainable is that, although the other person may never be able to see the situation from your point of view, they can accept that that’s how it is for you.

Acceptance is a much easier reach than understanding and it's within somebody's gift whereas understanding might not be in their gift at all. They may never understand because of their experience of life and so they can't empathise and put themselves in your shoes and see it from your point of view.

But they can accept that that's your point of view; such acceptance is in their gift and things can move on.

I think the struggle of putting yourself in that situation where you're striving to get somebody to understand can become corrosive. There’s are just better ways of dealing with it.

The person who finds it difficult to understand can accept that that's your point of view and springs from your experience. You can accept that they may never be able to see it from your point of view, because they're not you, they haven't had your experience, life hasn't happened to them in the way that it's happened to you so the acceptance is mutual, and we can move on.

Trying to pull this off can be really tricky but it's worth the effort.