An observation: In my experience, when talking past each other is more difficult to resolve, it tends often to be the case that one or both parties think the other’s position is wrong morally. This appears to be the case in the example in your post, and a contributing factor in some of the conversations in the comments. If you’re on the “a betrayal has occurred” side, it’s difficult to process “but this person’s perspective is that no betrayal has occurred”, and attempts to explain that perspective may come across as trying to excuse the betrayal, rather than trying to explain a different perspective where the betrayal doesn’t exist. The betrayal, from the perspective of those who see it, is viewed as a matter of indisputable fact, not just one person’s perspective which may or may not be shared.
Many differences of perspective can be resolved with a “oh, you think this and I think that, I get it, we misunderstood each other but now we don’t, problem solved”, but “oh, you think your betrayal is nonexistent? I get it now and am fine with that.” is unlikely. Step 1 when communicating across this sort of difference is to communicate to the person who doesn’t see the moral wrong, that from the other person’s perspective, the issue is a moral one. Once that has been successfully communicated and the situation de-escalated, the other perspective where there was no moral issue at stake may be more likely to be communicable to the person who didn’t hold it originally.
It’s a weird thing about humans, how our thinking can flip to a different mode when we perceive a moral wrong to have occurred, and that when we’re in the “a morality-relevant thing just happened/someone did something wrong” mode it is hard to take the “but other people may not see things the way I do” step. I could mumble something about this having evolutionary roots to do with coordination among groups, but I don’t have a good story for why we are this way, I just know we are. And: It doesn’t require a traumatic past experience with betrayal, to flip into the moral mode when you see a betrayal happening, and then react poorly and (from an outside perspective) unreasonably if other people don’t see things your way. I for one was raised to believe that when my “conscience” is activated by a moral wrong, that “conscience” is universal and every good person would see things the same way. This is factually incorrect, but seems very strongly like it should be right intuitively at times, particularly when having a reaction to something I see as wrong.
An observation: In my experience, when talking past each other is more difficult to resolve, it tends often to be the case that one or both parties think the other’s position is wrong morally. This appears to be the case in the example in your post, and a contributing factor in some of the conversations in the comments. If you’re on the “a betrayal has occurred” side, it’s difficult to process “but this person’s perspective is that no betrayal has occurred”, and attempts to explain that perspective may come across as trying to excuse the betrayal, rather than trying to explain a different perspective where the betrayal doesn’t exist. The betrayal, from the perspective of those who see it, is viewed as a matter of indisputable fact, not just one person’s perspective which may or may not be shared.
Many differences of perspective can be resolved with a “oh, you think this and I think that, I get it, we misunderstood each other but now we don’t, problem solved”, but “oh, you think your betrayal is nonexistent? I get it now and am fine with that.” is unlikely. Step 1 when communicating across this sort of difference is to communicate to the person who doesn’t see the moral wrong, that from the other person’s perspective, the issue is a moral one. Once that has been successfully communicated and the situation de-escalated, the other perspective where there was no moral issue at stake may be more likely to be communicable to the person who didn’t hold it originally.
It’s a weird thing about humans, how our thinking can flip to a different mode when we perceive a moral wrong to have occurred, and that when we’re in the “a morality-relevant thing just happened/someone did something wrong” mode it is hard to take the “but other people may not see things the way I do” step. I could mumble something about this having evolutionary roots to do with coordination among groups, but I don’t have a good story for why we are this way, I just know we are. And: It doesn’t require a traumatic past experience with betrayal, to flip into the moral mode when you see a betrayal happening, and then react poorly and (from an outside perspective) unreasonably if other people don’t see things your way. I for one was raised to believe that when my “conscience” is activated by a moral wrong, that “conscience” is universal and every good person would see things the same way. This is factually incorrect, but seems very strongly like it should be right intuitively at times, particularly when having a reaction to something I see as wrong.