Getting your Facts Right in Relationships

Speculations can be misleading because they are not based on facts. Making assumptions about situations isn’t always the right thing to do because we don’t actually know what the truth of the situation.

Sometimes people make assumptions like, ‘She doesn’t like me’, ‘whenever he sees me, he frowns his face’, ‘she doesn’t check on me again’… have you ever found yourself thinking along this line of thought in times past? And did you get to know the truth after making such kinds of assumptions?

I should also ask myself the same question over and over again. I realise that most of the assumptions I made in the past concerning how I felt people’s attitude were towards me weren’t always true or weren’t always what I had thought them to be. If I had communicated with the people I made assumptions about, I might have known the truth.

Making assumptions can affect relationships as well as making conclusions from things we don’t know to be true can make people act in ways that aren’t friendly towards each other. Sometimes relationships might suffer because of the parties involved in making assumptions; someone making assumptions on things he/she saw, on the other person’s attitude, on how someone’s expression was, etc.

Look back and think about all those situations you’ve made assumptions about, especially those people you think they didn’t like you, or people you thought always cared about how you looked or what bag you carried or what brand your cloth is.

For instance, let’s say Tonia assumes that her friend doesn’t want to be friends with her anymore because her friend didn’t call her for 3 months. If we take a look at the situation, we might find out that the situation may not be the way Tonia sees it and that there might be reasons for such situation.

If Tonia asks herself, ‘did I reach out to my friend too? Or am I waiting for him/her to reach out to me first? Could there be something he/she is going through that made him/her not call? etc.’ Tonia might get to know the reason behind her friend not calling her.

However, I am not saying that everybody likes us or that everyone acts in a friendly manner, what I am saying is this: before making conclusions about things, situations, or people, get the facts right first.

There are different ways we can use in getting our facts right in relationships, here are some of them:

1. Reach out: reach out, don’t wait for the other person to communicate with you first. Don’t allow pride. Let’s act more lovingly to people. Reach out and know what the situation is.
2. Communicate how you feel: communicate how you feel to the person and clear your doubts. If she hasn’t called you all these while, ask her what happened and talk things through. Discuss the situation, don’t judge.
3. Always remember to confirm first: When we always remember to confirm first and not conclude based on assumptions we make, it is better.

Many relationships have been severed on the grounds of assumptions most of which are a result of miscommunication before reaching this stage open the channel of communication.