I’ve found myself repeating a sentence to my clients a lot lately, especially the new couples I’m working with. (As a therapist I’m a bit like a stand-up comedian. If I get a new “bit” that’s working I get excited about weaving it into the act). The sentence is this - “Every fight you’ve ever had boils down to the question “Do you see me?”. A combination of my grad school studies on Attachment Theory, my explorations of Existential philosophy, my continuing education on Dr. Stephen Porges and Polyvagal Theory and his oft repeated premise that “all human beings are co-regulating creatures” and experience with about 300 couples since 2009 has really reduced down to those four words. “Do you see me?”. The conflicts we have are all related to being misunderstood, ignored or unseen. Think about the phrase we use when someone does not respond to our texts. They are “ghosting” us. It’s equivalent to non-existence.

Being seen and “mattering” to someone is as important as food, shelter and clothing. Again, think of the word. Matter, like the three phases of matter – solid, liquid, gas – means that it exists. It can be measured. When we want to matter to someone, what we really want is to confirm our existence. When that doesn’t happen we act out, or act in, with anger, anxiety, depression or sometimes addiction or self-harm in order to be seen or to get numb to that pain and dread.

But it’s about more than just the big reactions based on primal evolutionary needs. It’s also about self-knowledge. Without the resonance of another, the reflection, we can’t possibly know ourselves. It’d be like singing in a soundproof room. We’d never know our own voice.

I came across a beautiful quote from Bruce Lee that captures this eloquently:

“Self-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. The relationship is a process of self-evaluation and self-revelation. The relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself. To be is to be related.”

Jean Paul Sartre, in his play “No Exit”, used a phrase that is translated “Hell is other people”. This is often misunderstood as meaning that other people can be jerks and that life is hell because we have to live with them. This is not the case. (Though sometimes people can be hellish in their behaviors. Just go on social media.) What Sartre was trying to convey is the dark, complicated idea that none of us truly exist except through the eyes of another. The hell is that these people have their own histories, biases, judgements and flaws. They are cracked mirrors. Or funhouse mirrors, bending and exaggerating back to us an inaccurate reflection. We are damned to never fully know ourselves except through them. But – and here’s where I inject some hope – it is possible, and it is our obligation, to more fully know ourselves so we cannot be solely defined by others. Through inner work like journaling, dreamwork, active imagination, high-quality therapy and group work we can come up with a clearer picture of ourselves.