How Well Do You Really Know Me?

Text by: Vildana Efendić, Gestalt psychotherapist

A few days ago I accidentally saw my husband playing chess. Not only did he play chess, he was excellent at it. He won as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

“So you actually know how to play chess?!! I had no idea.. wow!”

“Of course I do, I took part in school competitions.”

This event, like many similar ones before it, has got me thinking. How well do we really know our partners?

I often hear from my clients, and from friends too, the phrase “I know him/her inside out” or “He/she knows me inside out.” Do they really? Inside out, deep within, beneath bones and muscles… do they know every darkest, happiest and saddest corner of you?

I think we take such statements too lightly. We have been with someone for years, and then those years give us the right to say we know someone???

I don't know my partner. I get to know him, or at least I try to. People change. We are not the same as we were 2, 5, 10 years ago. Trauma, events, people and experiences change us. I don't want my partner to know me inside out. I want him to get to know me every day, even if that means he finds out that I no longer love black and that blue is now my favourite colour. I want him to know that I no longer hold the same views on religion that I once did. Now I like wearing sports shoes.

I want to be surprised by my partner's reactions. To come home and be surprised by a reaction completely different from the one I expected. I want to be surprised, to feel that jealousy of not knowing him completely, of not knowing what is in his soul. And I want that excitement to last for as long as we are together. When I no longer want that, when I stop noticing that he now wears coats instead of jackets, that he likes to smell differently, that he uses some phrases he didn't use before… when I stop noticing, I will know that something is not right between us.

I want to get to know my partner. To be surprised by his brilliant chess game and to keep discovering him. Because the human soul is endless to me. No time, no space. So much there is to explore. You just need to watch, listen, smell and feel.