06/02/2025
I’m recovering this week from that dreaded once-a-year moment when I have to do my tax self-assessment (I know I'm not alone). Every year, I’m confronted by my own incapacity in a particular realm of human development. There’s a level of maturity I’m lacking around practical life administration and financial intelligence. It’s just not there yet. I’m working on it. It’s hard work.
However, I'm not too hard on myself, because I know I’ve invested my energy and resources into a different kind of maturity—one that is equally, if not more, important for the world we live in right now. It’s the capacity to see things from multiple perspectives at once.
As a couples’ therapist, if I can’t hold multiple perspectives simultaneously—if I can’t recognise that truth is multi-layered, containing subjective truths, agreed truths, and objective truths—then I’m useless at my job. Working with two humans who are both struggling and blaming the other requires me to keep both their experiences in mind. If I fail to do that, I’ll simply resonate with the person whose experiences mirror my own. I’ll overlay my own story on top of theirs, pick a side (whether I know I’m doing it or not), and drive them further apart instead of helping them resolve anything.
I believe that what this world needs is more people who can hold multiple perspectives. We are not in an era of moral clarity and certainty. These are times of moral ambiguity. It’s easy to fixate on one side of a dilemma, fully empathise with that side, and come up with endless reasons to support it. What’s harder is to remain open to the other side at the same time—to see their reasons, their pain, and their perspective. If our collective morality is still at the level of goodies and baddies, then... We. Are. F*****.
Look at the abortion debate, for instance. I can see why pro-lifers fight so passionately for the human embryo. And I can also see the fierce passion behind the pro-choice assertion that bodily autonomy must trump all else. Can you? If not, then in my view that’s your work to do: cultivating the capacity to hold two opposing truths in mind at once.
Why does that matter? Because when two equally strong forces pull against each other in a tug of war, we stay stuck. You can go off and join one side, hoping to tilt the balance, but plenty of others will join the opposite side. Being the person who can see both sides means realising there’s another possibility: drop the rope entirely.
Back to abortion. Seeing multiple perspectives means you can think, “Ah, given that they fundamentally believe a foetus is a human soul, it makes perfect sense they’d want to protect it so fiercely.” And, “Ah, given that they see the foetus as a clump of cells, it makes perfect sense they’d protect a woman’s bodily autonomy so fiercely.” Both positions are moral, each with its own foundational belief—one that can’t be objectively proved or disproved. So, drop the rope, and see the three-dimensional space all around the line we were stuck on.
Then what?
Great question. I don’t know exactly, but I do know we’ll start asking different questions (just as I do in my couples’ therapy sessions). Not:
- Who’s the baddy and who’s the goody?
- Who’s right and who’s wrong?
- Who wins and who loses?
But rather:
- Given both truths, what could honour and challenge both sides? (Not necessarily in a 50/50 way—this isn’t about a perfect split.)
- Can each of us genuinely care about the other’s truth and experience, not just our own? Can I care about the human life you think you’re protecting? Can I care about the pain and imprisonment of the woman you’re trying to protect?
- What’s possible if we care about both together?
I’m not talking about always finding a neat, tidy middle ground. Integral Theory says, “Everyone is right, but not everyone is equally right.” Sometimes, in a couple, one person IS more right than the other. (I’ll explain what I mean by “more right” in a moment.) But even then, the less-right person’s perspective has to be honoured and integrated, too. We can even include a third kind of “rightness”—for example, mine as the couples’ therapist—and integrate that as well. We glean the highest intelligence when we gather all the available insights from all perspectives and meld them into something more whole than the sum of its parts.
But here’s the thing: I don’t actually believe that most people are incapable of seeing multiple perspectives. I think plenty of people do see the nuances and complexities of an issue. But for that very reason, they’re often less likely to speak up—because they don’t fit neatly into one camp or the other. (Like me, a lot of the time.) Or, if they do voice their views, they’re less likely to be heard because the algorithm has a penchant for boosting the most divisive voices.
So what do we do about that? I guess we’re going to have to flood the algorithm with our nuanced, integrated wholes. Let’s make balance and complexity just as loud as outrage and certainty.
Back to what I mean by “more right”:
When I say someone is “more right,” I don’t mean they’re morally superior. I mean their viewpoint incorporates a wider lens—whether that’s more empathy, more information, or a more nuanced understanding of the context. In couples’ therapy, it might look like one partner realising not only what they contributed to the conflict but also how their partner is reacting from a place of past trauma. That broader, more empathic perspective is “more right” because it takes in more of the available data. And it’s fluid—tomorrow, the other partner might be the one who sees most clearly. Being “more right” simply means you’re able to hold a fuller reality in any given moment, which points the way towards deeper resolution.
You might think me naïve, but I believe this principle—accepting that some foundational beliefs can’t be argued (dropping the rope) and expanding our capacity to hold multiple perspectives—lies at the heart of how we solve our most wicked problems. From Gaza, to our global political divides, to the climate crisis, all of it.
Tell me that I’m wrong. You'll be right 😉.
