When I hear couples talk about being stuck in their relationship, I sometimes picture two people sitting with their backs to each other on opposite sides of a small island, sullenly awaiting a passing ship.

Each experiences the relationship almost as something that has happened to them.

But relationships aren’t independent entities. They’re created by two people, and both arrive with histories.

Family relationships, previous romantic relationships, and other important experiences influence what we expect from people, what frightens us, what reassures us, and what we do when we feel threatened.

Sometimes we’re not only reacting to our partner.

We’re reacting to what our partner’s behavior means to us because of someone who came before them.

Two People, Two Histories

Take Ollie and Rose, a couple I saw in my practice.

Ollie grew up with parents whose drinking frequently took precedence over considering how it affected him. As an adult, he became uncomfortable around excessive drinking, particularly when it involved someone he loved.

Rose grew up with a controlling and highly judgmental father. She learned to experience disapproval as a threat to her independence and, to some degree, to the security of the relationship itself.

When Ollie and Rose first met, Rose sometimes drank more than Ollie was comfortable with. Ollie didn’t explain much about his history because he didn’t want his discomfort to become Rose’s problem.

Instead, he tried to manage the situation.

If Rose ordered another glass of wine at dinner, he might comment on it or become distant.

Rose experienced this as control.

So she pushed back.

Sometimes she’d order another drink partly because she wanted it and partly because she resented feeling that Ollie was deciding whether she should have it.

Ollie then experienced her response as further evidence that drinking mattered more to her than his feelings.

He became more disapproving.

She became more defiant.

And now they had themselves a relationship problem.

What Each Person Thought Was Happening

From Ollie’s perspective, he was making a reasonable request and Rose didn’t care enough about him to consider it.

From Rose’s perspective, Ollie was trying to control her choices and withdrawing his approval when she didn’t comply.

Neither interpretation came out of nowhere.

That’s important.

Ollie wasn’t inventing his discomfort. Rose wasn’t inventing hers. Their reactions made sense in the context of what each had experienced before they ever met.

The problem was that each was reacting partly to the person sitting across the table and partly to someone who wasn’t there.

Ollie wasn’t Rose’s father.

Rose wasn’t Ollie’s parents.

But for a while, everyone was having dinner together.

When Protection Creates the Thing You Fear

There’s another wrinkle.

Both Ollie and Rose were trying to protect themselves.

Ollie tried to prevent the experience of someone he loved choosing alcohol over consideration of him.

Rose tried to prevent the experience of someone she loved controlling her and making love or approval contingent on compliance.

But their methods of protection helped create exactly what each feared.

The more Ollie tried to control the drinking, the more Rose asserted her independence.

The more Rose asserted her independence through drinking, the more Ollie felt disregarded.

Their histories weren’t simply influencing how they interpreted each other.

They were helping create the behavior each person was reacting to.

Some of this can be understood through projection and introjection—the ways expectations and experiences formed in one relationship can become active in another. But you don’t need the terminology to recognize the problem.

Sometimes we’re responding not only to the person in front of us, but to people and relationships that came before them.

The Past Matters Without Being the Present

The solution isn’t for Ollie to decide, This is all about my childhood, so I shouldn’t have feelings about Rose’s drinking.

Nor is it for Rose to decide, This is all about my father, so Ollie should be able to say whatever he wants about my drinking.

Both reactions contain information.

The trick is learning to separate where a reaction comes from from what is actually happening now.

Ollie might say:

Drinking brings up something pretty strong in me that predates you. I don’t want to control what you do, but I also don’t want to pretend I don’t have a reaction to it.

Rose might say:

When you comment on my drinking or become distant, I experience it as controlling. I know some of that comes from my history, but I still need to be able to make my own choices.

Now they’re talking about themselves rather than defining each other.

And that changes the conversation considerably.

Your Reaction Can Belong to You Without Being Wrong

One of the harder things in relationships is recognizing that a feeling can belong to you without therefore being irrelevant.

Ollie’s reaction to drinking belongs to Ollie.

That doesn’t mean Rose shouldn’t care about it.

Rose’s sensitivity to being controlled belongs to Rose.

That doesn’t mean Ollie should ignore it.

Knowing where a reaction comes from allows you to own it without having to disown it.

Instead of:

You need to stop doing this because you’re making me feel this way.

It becomes something closer to:

This affects me. I understand some of why it affects me. Can we talk about what we want to do with that together?

That’s a very different invitation.

Who Else Is in the Argument?

Most of us bring previous relationships into current ones.

We couldn’t really do otherwise.

The goal isn’t to arrive in a relationship psychologically disinfected, free from previous experience. It’s to become increasingly able to recognize when the past has entered the room.

Sometimes your partner really is being controlling.

Sometimes they really are being inconsiderate.

And sometimes something they’re doing brushes against an older experience and arrives with considerably more meaning than they intended.

Usually the useful question isn’t whose reaction is right?

It’s:

What is happening between us, and what are each of us bringing to it?

Because sometimes the person you’re arguing with isn’t the only person in the argument.