Self-Referencing in Relationships: When Your Experience Hijacks Theirs
They were driving home from a long weekend away when the children called to the front seat.
"Can we listen to Bongo Bob?"
There hadn't been any music playing. A few seconds later, the father reached over and put on another song instead.
From the back seat came an exasperated protest.
"Why does Daddy always do this? We ask for a song, and then he plays his own."
It was such an ordinary moment that it would have been easy to dismiss. No one was yelling. No one was trying to be hurtful. It wasn't really about the song.
It wasn't exactly selfishness either. What I noticed was the self-referencing in it. The children's request brought him back to himself, to what he wanted to hear.
There is nothing inherently wrong with self-referencing. We all do it, and we need to. It is one of the ways we find our way into someone else's experience. A friend tells us about a loss, and something in us remembers our own. Someone talks about feeling excluded, and we know something about that feeling because we have been there too. Our own experience can become a bridge into empathy and compassion. It helps us imagine what it might be like to stand in someone else's shoes.
Self-referencing itself isn't the problem. It becomes one when the bridge turns into a detour.
Instead of my own experience helping me understand yours, I get pulled back into mine. Your story reminds me of my story, and now we're talking about me. Your request reminds me of what I want, and my preference takes over. Your disappointment reminds me that I meant well, and instead of staying with the fact that I hurt you, I start explaining my intentions. Your feedback reminds me of everything I need to defend.
The other person's experience becomes the trigger for our own, and somewhere in that movement we stop being with them.
The father may have experienced the moment as completely benign. The children asked for music, music entered his mind, and he thought of something he wanted to hear. He did not necessarily decide that his preference mattered more. He did not have to be thinking, I don't care what the kids asked for.
But intention answers the question of what was happening inside him. Impact asks a different question: What was it like to be with him?
From the back seat, they asked for something and ended up with what he wanted instead. Nobody directly denied their request. It was replaced.
Repeated often enough, these moments start communicating something about the relationship. Not necessarily, You don't love me. Something more basic: I don't know whether what matters to me will still matter once it reaches you.
I think this is part of what makes a relationship feel sturdy. I trust that when I bring you my experience, it will not immediately have to compete with yours.
That doesn't mean you have to agree with me. It doesn't mean you have to give me what I want, or that your needs disappear. It means I trust that you can stay with what I am bringing you long enough for me to feel received before we turn toward you.
Without that trust, people start protecting themselves.
At breakfast, an adult son was sitting across from his father. The father reached across the table with his fork toward a roasted tomato on his son's plate. Before the fork arrived, the son intercepted it with his own, almost like a goalie blocking a shot.
"No. You have to ask."
He did not seem to have to consider whether he wanted to share. His body was already prepared to defend the boundary.
Food had long carried an element of competition in that family. Another adult son was home visiting his parents and sitting down to breakfast. His father usually preferred cheese and salami. The son loved smoked salmon and began eating it with obvious pleasure.
Suddenly his father became interested.
"Save me some. Don't eat it all."
Maybe seeing the salmon reminded the father that he liked it. Maybe there was no conscious competition at all. We cannot know exactly what was happening inside him.
But that was not how his son experienced it. What he experienced was: You want it because you see how much I want it.
There is something unsettling about that. Your enjoyment seems to activate someone else's desire. Now you cannot simply enjoy what you are eating. Your wanting has brought their wanting into the room. There is suddenly something to keep track of. How much is left? Do I need to protect my share? Is what I want secure once you see how much I want it?
Years later, in another household, a partner found herself eating faster because she worried that the food would be gone if she didn't. There might be plenty. Nobody was saying there was not enough. Still, meals had begun to carry urgency. She felt she needed to protect her share.
Patterns do not only travel because children imitate their parents. Sometimes they travel through the adaptations children make in response to them.
A child who learns, I have to protect what I want because no one else will, may become unusually attentive to his own needs. He may get very good at knowing what he wants, holding on to it, and making sure it is not overlooked. Another person's desire can become a cue to check his own: What do I want? Am I going to miss out? Is there enough for me?
That adaptation may have made sense in the environment where it developed. But what begins as a way of protecting your own needs can eventually make the people around you feel that they have to protect theirs too.
Nobody has to consciously decide to create competition for competition to become part of the relationship.
Development can also go in the opposite direction. A child who cannot rely on other people to stay with her experience may stop expecting anyone to. Instead of becoming more vigilant about herself, she may become extremely oriented toward everyone else. She learns to read the room, anticipate what people need, make space, accommodate, and sometimes lose track of her own experience altogether.
Neither adaptation gives us much freedom.
We need to be able to reference ourselves. We also need to be able to leave ourselves. We need access to our own experience without letting it become the organizing experience in every interaction. Remembering ourselves sometimes brings us closer to someone, and sometimes it pulls us away.
Persistent self-referencing can create a selfish relational structure even when nobody intends to put themselves first. One person's wants, explanations, associations, and needs repeatedly receive more space. Everyone else's experience has to negotiate around them.
It can even create a kind of power imbalance without power being the motive. If one person's experience repeatedly enters with more force, everyone else has to spend more energy protecting their own.
Calling someone selfish can sometimes stop the inquiry before we have understood what is happening. Self-referencing gives us somewhere else to look.
When someone brings me something of themselves, what happens to my attention? Does my own experience help me get closer to theirs, or does it become a detour back to me? Can I stay with what they have brought me long enough for them not to have to compete for the space they just opened?
And when I do find myself back inside my own experience, can I notice it soon enough to return?
