You see tomato, I see tomatho

Can two people see things the same way if they try really hard?

We all know what a difference in points of view can lead to. It breaks families, friendships, starts fights, and even wars.

But how does this happen? How do two people who understand and love each other stop doing that? What does it take to turn a friend against a friend? Unfortunately, most of us do have buttons that when pushed, can trigger hurt feelings, little arguments, and eventually major conflicts. When things are good, we would not believe that we can ever turn against our friend. We might not even be aware of our issues, and our weak spots. But when the friend rubs us the wrong way, intentionally or not, when she/he presses our weak spots that touch the deeply rooted issues that make us self conscious, we lit on fire and start firing back, without accepting the possibility that the friend really did not try to hurt us.

I do not need to be a psychologist to know that our past bad experiences influence our behavior, often subconsciously. This applies to all animals, including us, the "human animal".
If you approach a dog that had been abused in the past, the dog might presume you are trying to do evil and even the smallest movement on your side might be considered as an attempt to hurt it. The dog bites, and you back off wondering what just happened. You clearly did not try doing anything wrong, so why would the dog do that?

During fights, we do not know or realize that the people we deal with have certain fears, issues, experiences, and instincts, and that they can quickly reflect on these to make a decision about "your intentions". One minute you are John's best buddy, the next minute you are the guy trying to steal his girlfriend!!! And it was all because you smiled at her. John saw the look in your eyes when you looked at her! And you wonder "What have just happened?". Why is John attacking me?

When others fear something, they might start presuming your intentions are bad, and can see all your actions as bad. When they fear something bad might happen to their loved ones, or to themselves, they "watch for it" and they can see that it even in the most ordinary things. The fear self propagates and feeds on itself. And girlfriends become more jealous, boyfriends become more possessive, wives become more bitter, mothers become paranoid, a stranger taking to your kids might be molester, a person admiring your house from the street might be a potential burglar, an attractive woman sitting next to your husband might be his mistress. Everything is a possibility and you decide how things are!

What happens next? Your friend holds grudges against you and when you press another one of her/his buttons, she/he enumerates all the bad things plus more that you ever did to her/him and how evil they all were and how bad it all made her/him feel and how mean it was of you to do all that. Yes, you are a bad bad person.

And that is the end of the story.

Unless... of course you are able to open up and discuss the most sensitive issues and fears of one another, to truly understand each others reactions. But how often does this happen? How often do you come to a friend who just attacked you and say: "Hey John, I am concerned about this, I want to understand why you think I am an asshole. I think you might help me see myself from your point of view, and possibly uncover some of my problems I am not aware of, and I think I can help you identify some of your fears and issues if we talk about this."