You had to be there: The stories that only make sense with you

I was walking to the gym this morning when a very therapist-y thought snuck up on me.

You know the question I often ask couples at the start of therapy.
Why this person?
Of all the people in the world, why did you choose them?

Sometimes I ask it slightly differently. What was it about this person that made you fall in love with them?

It’s a diagnostic question, sure. I’m listening for attachment patterns, values, repetition. All the usual therapist things. And people answer in the ways you’d expect.

They were easy to be around.
We had things in common.
We shared the same values.

But there’s another answer that comes up, and every time it does, it always touches me.

About half the time, people don’t talk about how their partner treated them. They talk about how their partner treated someone else.

They tell me about the moment they saw their partner volunteer. Or pick up their sister’s kids from school. Or help a neighbour chop firewood. Or drop food off when someone had COVID. Small acts. Ordinary kindness. But somehow, those moments change everything.

They shape how we see someone. Not because they’re impressive, but because they reveal a person’s values, their sense of responsibility to other people, and how they choose to show up in relationship.

And then I had a thought I’ve genuinely never had before, which surprised me because I think about relationships for a living.

Maybe we start relationships because we like someone.
But maybe we stay in them for a completely different reason.

At a certain point, it’s possible we stop actively evaluating whether we like or love the person at all. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because something else has quietly taken over.

And this is the part that’s hard to describe.

I’m not talking about building a life together (“The Story”). I’m not talking about shared goals, mortgages, children, or even a shared narrative in the big sense. That’s a different phenomenon. I know that one well.

What I’m talking about is much smaller and much stranger.

It’s the linguistics of a relationship.
The somatic, sensory, automatic aspects.

The way I walk in the door and you look at me that way, and then I look back this way, and we do the thing we always do. The way you say one particular word and I always respond with another, because years ago something happened and now that exchange is baked into the relationship. The way a tone, a pause, or a look carries more information than a full sentence ever could.

None of that is intentional. None of it is planned. It just forms.

At some point, you’re no longer only relating to the person.

You’re relating to the private lexicon that exists between you.

The relationship becomes its own entity.

Not a story you’re consciously telling, but a structure. An architecture. A system of references, gestures, expectations, and meanings that only make sense if you’ve been there long enough. A way of knowing. A collection of small, almost invisible understandings that only exist if you were there. Only they know what’s behind the new wallpaper, because they remember the day the corner tore. Only they know the look that crosses your face when that food is mentioned, because they were there in Malta when it happened.

And you can have that without being emotionally close. You can have that without “building something.” You can even have that without particularly liking the person.

That realisation landed for me partly because of the time of year.

It’s Christmas, which you’d think would be peak therapy season. Everyone dreading their family dynamics, bracing for old patterns, anticipating chaos. And yet, in all my years of practice, I’ve never had someone book a session and say, “Help me cope with my family over Christmas.”

That’s always struck me as odd. Because of course families are complicated. Some are toxic. Some are exhausting. Some are loving in theory and unbearable in practice. We all have our own flavour of chaos.

And yet, people still show up.

I wonder if part of the reason is this: even in difficult families, there is a shared lexicon. There is a way things are done. A rhythm. An understanding of what’s expected. Who sits where. Who says what. What gets ignored. What (or whom) gets joked about instead of addressed.

Families tell a story, yes. But more than that, they speak a language.

And even if it’s not a great one, it’s a shared one.

That shared language creates meaning. And meaning is incredibly compelling to human beings, on an existential level. It offers a sense of belonging, of orientation. A sense of “I know how to be here (even if I don’t want to be here).”

If we come together often enough as humans, in any configuration, couples, families, friendships, work relationships, we start to generate this kind of relational lexicon. Groups, dyads, systems all develop it.

That’s the thing that’s fascinating me today.

For example, my sister and I aren’t super close. We’re very different people. We don’t have an emotionally intimate relationship.

And yet, the relationship feels close.

Not because of affection or vulnerability, but because we share a way of engaging that comes from having lived through the same things. The same parents. The same school. The same household rules and unspoken agreements….. “Remember when….?”

We share a lexicon of relating.

And when relationships end, what’s lost isn’t just the person. It’s that entire system. That language. Those reflexes. That way of being that only existed in that specific relational space.

There’s suddenly no one left who knows what that look meant. Or why that word always made you laugh. Or why you always responded the same way.

And in that sense, something really does die.

Not just attachment.
Not just love.

But a version of you that only existed there.

That might be why endings hurt in ways that logic can’t touch. Why we can know a relationship is over and still grieve it like a death. Because it isn’t just about losing someone.

It’s about losing a language and a land you were fluent in.

So maybe this time of year isn’t just about who we spend time with, or whether those relationships are healthy or easy or even enjoyable. Maybe it’s about the languages we return to. The familiar ways of being known. The rooms where our bodies already know how to stand, when to speak, when to stay quiet. And maybe that’s why we keep showing up, even when it’s complicated. Because to step into those spaces is to step back into a version of ourselves that only exists there. And leaving, even briefly, would mean letting go of a self that only makes sense there.

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