What if most of your relationship struggles weren’t about conflict at all – but about misunderstanding? And that it’s so easy to misread each other?

There’s something I’ve noticed again and again in my coaching work, in conversations with friends, and even in my own life.

Many of the struggles we experience in relationships aren’t because people don’t care about one another. They’re about how we interpret other people’s actions and behaviors.

Someone pulls away, and we feel rejected. Someone becomes quiet, and we assume disinterest. Or, someone responds differently than we expected, and suddenly the emotional temperature shifts.

But often what we’re reacting to has very little to do with us at all. (I wish this were so easy to remember on a daily basis!)

How We Misread Each Other: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

It happens so under the radar that we barely notice it.

But we’re watching and listening. We’re interpreting someone’s tone and paying close attention to timing. And we even dive deeply to interpret silence. And before long, we’ve built a story. Often, this story creates more tension and drama than the original moment ever did.

This is something I explored recently in a conversation with personality expert Marita Littauer on Her New Lens, and it reframed something I thought I already understood.

Many relationship struggles aren’t actually about conflict. They’re about misunderstanding.

That distinction matters more than it might seem.

Why Most of Us Were Never Taught This

Most of us were never taught how differently people actually see and move through the world.

We weren’t taught that some people need space to process while others need to talk things through. Some people move quickly, and others move very carefully. Some recharge in solitude, and others recharge in connection. So we default to assuming others will respond the way we would. And when they don’t, we take it personally.

Marita’s work, rooted in a personality framework that traces back more than 2,000 years to Hippocrates, gives language to these differences. And that language, it turns out, is surprisingly powerful.

 

Why So Many of Us Don’t Actually Know Who We Are

One of the first things Marita said that surprised me was that by the time many of us reach our forties, we’re genuinely confused about who we really are.

Think about it. From childhood, we’ve been shaped by what our parents wanted us to be, what our teachers expected, what our partners needed, and what our bosses rewarded. Even more, when we were very young (under 6), the lenses through which we saw the world were shaped and deeply informed by all the caregivers in our lives.

Layer enough of those influences on top of one another, and the original person underneath gets pretty buried.

“A lot of people in that age range have kind of an emotional breakdown,” Marita observed, “because they’ve tried so hard to please everybody else. They don’t even know who they are anymore.”

This is partly why she believes so many divorces happen in midlife. Not because people have necessarily fallen out of love, but because they’ve lost themselves — and the relationship can’t hold the weight of that confusion.

Your Personality Type Is a Starting Point, Not a Ceiling

Once you know your type, the goal isn’t to use it as an excuse. As Marita’s ex-husband used to remind her: “There is no special place at the airport for sanguines (social butterflies) who missed their flight.”

**See more below on discovering your personality type through Marita’s website below.

Understanding your personality is a tool for growth, not a hall pass for staying exactly as you are. Marita talks about the difference between people who are “living in their weaknesses” and those who have done the work to “live in their strengths.”

You could put three people in a room with the exact same personality profile, she says, and like one of them significantly more simply because of how much they’ve matured within their type.

The same wiring. Very different people.

We Can Stop Misreading Each Other: Where Things Begin to Shift

One of the quietest but most powerful shifts we can make in relationships is: moving from reaction to curiosity.

Instead of asking why are they like this?  We can begin asking what they might need?

That shift alone lets go of so much tension. Because understanding someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them. It doesn’t mean excusing hurtful behavior. But it significantly changes how we experience what’s happening.

Marita’s marriage is a good example. Her husband — a detail-conscious, perfectionistic CPA and a “Peaceful Phlegmatic” — needs to come home after a full day of working with people and sit in the recliner for thirty minutes before he can engage with anything else. Early on, Marita knew this in theory. She’d been saying it from stages for years. Still, living it was different.

She has since learned: let him have the recliner. She goes out with her girlfriends. Everyone wins.

The kitchen cupboards are another small, telling example. Her husband once asked if they could put the canisters away — the flour, the sugar, the things most people keep on the counter. It bothered him. She could have pushed back. Instead, she tucked them in the cabinet.

“If that makes him happy, that is an easy fix for me to do.”

A tiny adjustment, essentially costless to her, that matters enormously to him.

“I really don’t know how people stay married when they don’t understand this,” she told me.  Not as a sales pitch, but as a quiet, earnest observation.

The Relief of Perspective

One of the most meaningful realizations for many people is realizing how much of what we take personally was never personal at all.

When that lands, everything shifts.

We feel less defensive. Less reactive. Less exhausted. And often, without either person changing, the relationship begins to feel easier.

This is something I see regularly in my coaching work. The moment a client realizes the thing they’ve been carrying — the rejection, the tension, the frustration — wasn’t actually aimed at them? It’s like watching someone put down a very heavy bag.

We can then watch them move from reaction to curiosity.

Instead of asking:

Why are they like this?

We begin asking:

What might they need?

That shift alone can make a huge difference, according to Marita.

Because understanding someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them.
It doesn’t mean excusing hurtful behavior.

But it often changes how we experience what’s happening.

**Can you relate to this? I find this to be such a powerful reframe.

Even One Shift Changes Everything

Special bonus: You don’t need both people to be doing this work for things to improve.

This is something Marita and I both see.  When one person begins to see differently, conversations relax, tension eases, and connection returns. And this is not because anything dramatic changed. But perspective did.

Marita put it plainly: even if only one person in a relationship starts doing this work, it makes a difference. You don’t need mutual participation to begin. And you just need one person who cares enough to look.

You Don’t Even Need Them to Take the Test

One of the most practical things Marita shared is that you don’t have to wait for someone to take a personality profile before you can start understanding them better (thankfully!!). She calls them “visible clues” — the way someone organizes their workspace, their body language, how they respond when they walk through the door after work.

These clues are available to anyone willing to pay attention.

And paying attention, really, genuinely noticing another person, might be the most underrated relationship skill there is.

It all reminds me of the love languages. To really love someone in a way that they feel loved, we need to understand them and their love language.

The Lens Worth Trying

In every episode of Her New Lens, I ask my guest for a practical lens to offer listeners—a small shift in perspective that can open something up.

Marita’s answer was simple: start by recognizing that people are genuinely different from you, and that you have a role in how your relationships go.

So simple yet with the power to truly move the needle.

Not a role of fixing, managing, or accommodating endlessly. Just the willingness to ask, what does this person need, and is there something I can do?

She says that most of the time, there is.

Where to Go From Here

Marita Littauer is a multifaceted author, speaker, and entrepreneur based in Lubbock, Texas. With more than 50 years of experience, she has dedicated her career to empowering individuals to understand themselves more deeply and live fulfilling lives.

As the daughter of renowned speaker and author Florence Littauer, Marita was immersed in The Personalities from the age of nine, traveling with her mother, and eventually carrying forward the family legacy. She brings unique insight into identifying personalities through visible clues and applying an understanding of The Personalities to strengthen relationships.

Through her writing, speaking, and other professional ventures, Marita exemplifies a life of purpose, resilience, and continual growth—remaining committed to inspiring others to live authentically and with intention.

If this conversation sparked something for you:

• Take the personality profile and discover your primary and secondary types
• Pick up Wired That Way for the full framework, including the complete list of strengths, weaknesses, and emotional needs for each type
• Visit Marita’s website for free resources, including speeches by both Marita and her mother

The people in your life are not difficult. They are different. And the more we understand that difference — in ourselves and in others — the more compassion, and the more peace, becomes possible.

**See the podcast and show notes here.

This post is based on my conversation with Marita Littauer on Her New Lens. Find all episode links and guest resources in the show notes.