A few years ago, a guy friend of mine did something that made my stomach drop. He said something quite awful to another friend he had just started dating. And it was in a text too, so there was no fuzzy memory to blame, no benefit of the doubt. Several in my friend group saw the text together, and the reaction was instant: We can’t believe he said that. We don’t like him right now.

That was my first reaction too. What a jerk! But then came a second reaction—quiet but still insistent: I suddenly could see the little boy underneath that text. Maybe a version of him that got hurt by women a long time ago, and never quite put the armor down.

That’s the “multiplicity mindset,” in action, and it’s what I want to write about today.

Here’s the idea: We are all a giant quilt—a quilt stitched with all our traits, characteristics, and behaviors, both positive, negative, and neutral.

Sometimes I’m honest, and sometimes I bend the truth. Sometimes I’m kind and sometimes I’m selfish. I’ve been both loyal and narcissistic. Both gentle and harsh. And this is, of course, true of everyone you love, and everyone who’s ever disappointed you.

We don’t usually see people this way. One bad text, one bad day, and we let it stand in for the whole person. That reaction is not really a character flaw; it’s more akin to an ancient survival instinct. My pet theory is that humans are wired to make snap judgments about one another. In our evolutionary past, we had to think and act quickly, judging whether a new neighbor was friend or foe. Whatever its origin, being judgy is automatic, and overriding that instinct takes real, deliberate effort.

OK, back to my guy friend: Seeing him with a multiplicity lens didn’t mean excusing what he wrote, or deciding it was fine, or pretending I wasn’t bothered. Understanding multiplicity is not about justifying, condoning, or defending anything.

It’s about holding two ideas at once: (1) That was a bad thing to do, and (2) there’s a whole, complicated, messy person behind the bad act. What I do with those two ideas is a separate question entirely. I can recognize him, feel for him, maybe even forgive him, and still decide I don’t want to hang out with him right now. Embracing a multiplicity mindset doesn’t mean any of those things. It just asks you to see the whole quilt in front of you instead of a single patch.

Multiplicity works when it’s turned inward, too. The same compassion that lets you hold someone else’s contradictions is the compassion you owe yourself for the dishonest thing you did last week, or the time you yelled at your kid. It doesn’t erase everything else you are.

One place multiplicity is obvious to apply is parenting. When a child misbehaves, you can punish the behavior without calling his or her character into question. Of course, this is easy to say and hard to actually practice, but for parents, it’s one of the most important things we can do.

Try This

• Pick one person you’ve recently reduced to a single trait: the flaky friend, the difficult in-law, the coworker who let you down or took credit for your work.
• Name one good quality of theirs, right alongside whatever’s frustrating you.

You don’t have to excuse or condone anything to do this. Just don’t let one patch stand in for the whole quilt. And if multiplicity is a mindset you want more of, Harry and I go into way more detail in Chapter 9 of How to Feel Loved.

Sending you (and your whole, contradictory, quilted self) much warmth this week!

Best,
Sonja