The quality hasn’t changed. The relationship around it has.
Some of the most meaningful relationships in my life have been with people who are very different from me.
They’ve had different personalities, different ways of thinking, different strengths, and different ways of navigating the world. I’ve never been particularly interested in surrounding myself with people who see everything the way I do. In many ways, I’ve always been drawn to the opposite. I enjoy discovering what another person brings that I don’t and watching differences create something neither of us could have created alone.
Yet this appreciation for difference has also created a tension that I continue to grapple with.
In fact, I found myself wrestling with it again this month.
While I genuinely enjoy difference, not everyone experiences difference the same way. When someone brings a quality I don’t naturally possess, I’m often curious about it. I want to understand it. I want to explore what happens when their strengths meet mine. I’m fascinated by what emerges in the space between two people who aren’t trying to be the same.
Over time, however, I’ve noticed that some people experience differences less as something to explore and more as something to resolve. Something to fix. Something to soften. Something to make more comfortable.
That observation has left me with questions that continue to surface in my relationships:
How do I remain open to growth while also remaining true to myself?
How do I honour another person’s experience of me without automatically accepting their interpretation as truth?
I don’t ask these questions from a distance. I ask them because they continue to show up in real relationships with real people.
Sometimes a quality one person appreciates is the very quality another person struggles with. Sometimes a strength that creates balance in one relationship creates tension in another. And sometimes I find myself wondering whether the challenge is the difference itself, or simply the meaning each person assigns to it.
As a therapist, I often tell couples that my job is not to change either of them. My job is to understand them, help them understand themselves, help them understand one another, and then explore what might become possible in the space between them.
I’m not looking for who is right.
I’m interested in what happens when two unique human beings meet. What strengths emerge? What tensions emerge? What balance becomes possible?
Because relationships are not built from two people being identical. They’re built from two people learning what to do with their differences.
That same philosophy I apply in my personal life.
When clients tell me someone has criticized a preference, a value, or a part of who they are, I often ask a simple question about their perspective:
“Are you okay with that?”
Not because other people’s perspectives don’t matter. They do. And not because relationships don’t require reflection. They absolutely do.
But if something isn’t harming another human being, who am I to decide whether it is right or wrong for them?
My role is not to decide who another person should be. My role is to help them understand who they are and determine whether they can live comfortably alongside it.
Lately, I’ve realized I need to ask myself that same question.
Not whether someone approves of a particular quality. Not whether everyone interprets it positively. But whether I am okay with it.
Over the years, I’ve been described in many different ways: passionate, direct, thoughtful, protective, strong-willed, intense, insightful, and, at times, overwhelming.
What strikes me is that depending on the person, the exact same quality can receive a completely different label.
For a long time, I wasn’t asking myself what was wrong with me. I was asking something else.
Why is that wrong?
If I can clearly communicate what I’m experiencing, why is that wrong?
If I advocate for myself when something doesn’t feel right, why is that wrong?
If I ask difficult questions, why is that wrong?
I wasn’t looking for these parts of myself to disappear. Nor was I trying to become someone else.
I was trying to understand how they could coexist with the people around me.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less interested in deciding whether a trait is universally good or bad. I’m far more interested in where that trait is being expressed and how it is being received.
Because what one person experiences as intensity, another experiences as passion.
What one person experiences as confrontation, another experiences as honesty.
What one person experiences as bossiness, another experiences as leadership.
The quality hasn’t changed. The relationship around it has.
I’ve often thought about a sunflower growing in the shade.
A sunflower may bend. It may adapt. It may learn how to survive. But eventually it has to ask a different question.
Not:
“How do I become less of a sunflower?”
But:
“Am I trying to grow somewhere that cannot appreciate what I naturally bring?”
Perhaps people face a similar dilemma.
Not because we are perfect. Not because we are beyond growth. But because not every environment knows what to do with every strength, and not every person sees differences as an asset.
I’ve also noticed that some people appreciate our strengths right up until those strengths require something from them.
They appreciate communication until we’re communicating hurt.
They admire boundaries until those boundaries apply to them.
They value confidence until we disagree.
They celebrate strength until that strength invites accountability and responsibility.
That’s often the moment a relationship reveals something important. Not about who is right, but about how each person relates to difference.
Can they remain curious about a quality that challenges them?
Can they recognize value in something they don’t naturally possess?
Can they appreciate a strength when it affects them directly?
My husband taught me a great deal about this.
Not because we are the same. We aren’t. And not because he agrees with everything I think or do. He doesn’t.
What he helped me see is that the very qualities one person experiences as problematic can be experienced by another as valuable.
Where some people saw intensity, he often saw passion.
Where some people saw stubbornness, he saw conviction.
Where some people saw “too much,” he saw someone fully engaged with life.
What mattered wasn’t that he interpreted me exactly as I interpreted myself. What mattered was that he approached those differences with curiosity before judgment.
And that made all the difference.
The older I get, the less interested I become in finding people who are exactly like me. I enjoy different perspectives too much for that.
What interests me now is discovering what can be created when two people bring different strengths into the same space.
I believe differences can become a beautiful masterpiece of balance. Not despite the differences, but because of them.
That only happens, however, when both people see difference as something worth exploring. When both people are willing to lean into their strengths rather than defend them. When both people remain curious about what the other brings to the relationship.
Which leaves me with a question I’ve been sitting with lately:
When two people are different, do they see those differences as problems to solve, or as contributions to explore?
It appears the answer often determines what becomes possible in the space between them.
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