When we were dating, I commonly joked
with Jenny that I was psychic and could read her thoughts. For some
reason, she didn't believe me, but I now think that being psychic
could be the best thing in a relationship.
Everyone assumes that you get to know a
person better by spending time with them. If you have spent years
living with someone, you are expected to know their habits better
than someone you have only known for a few days. But when we say
something like "he knows her really well,", what do we
mean? It seems that we mean he can practically read her mind, or that
he can accurately predict what she is thinking at any moment.
This isn't just an outsider thing,
either. I have both seen, and experienced, that in a relationship
that has lasted for years, one person can have an expectation that
the other should know what
they are thinking at any point. There is even a published book titled
"Why can't you read my mind?" which is a relationship
self-help guide that has only four and five-star reviews on the U.S.
Amazon website. Reviews of it are full of people admitting that they
were expecting more from their spouse than was possible!
Why would we want
someone to know our thoughts? Probably because we would take it as a
sign of them knowing us really well, and therefore that they love us.
I think that we take someone knowing us to be proof of this. But of
course, no-one is actually psychic. No single person will ever be
able to always know the thoughts of another, no matter how much time
is spent with them. We can only get as far as knowing a lot of their
experiences and habits, and making accurate guesses.
So we might wonder,
what is the point of this desire we have to be known so well? What is
the reason for being born wanting something which no person can ever
provide? This question makes me think of a phrase repeated many times
in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible- that "nothing under the
sun" can satisfy us. We are given a clue that the answer is
found elsewhere, that meaning is found in something bigger than a
spouse, and that we really can enjoy being in a relationship where we
are fully known, if only we look in the right place.
Image source: http://papamalo.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/pseudo-science-101/
