The Real Reason Your Fights Go in Circles

Magritte wasn’t being clever.
He was pointing at something most of us miss.

In his famous painting of a pipe, below the image, he wrote a simple, jarring sentence: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”—This is not a pipe.

At first glance, it feels like a trick. It looks exactly like a pipe. It’s painted with such realistic detail that your brain insists on it. You might even ask: “If this isn’t a pipe, what else could it possibly be?”

But Magritte was making a profound point: The depiction of a pipe is not the pipe itself.

No matter how realistically it is painted, you cannot pick it up. You cannot pack it with tobacco. You cannot smoke it. It is merely a symbol—a “compressed package” of the idea of a pipe.

The image is not the thing itself.

As they say, the map is not the territory. In a relationship, this is the literal truth: The words we use are not the reality we feel.

Language is just a system of symbols. Words aren’t the experience itself; they are just “compressed packages” of meaning.

When you speak, you aren’t actually sending your feelings across the room—you’re taking your massive, complex inner world – your emotions, memories, needs, body sensations, fears – and squeeze all of that into a few words.

That’s encoding.

The “Encoding” Problem

Imagine what is happening inside you after a long day. It’s a heavy mix of exhaustion, a craving for appreciation and love, and the sting of feeling left alone.

Inside you might be:
“I’ve been working since 8 AM, I did the shopping, I cooked dinner,
I’m tired. I want some help, or at least some appreciation. I just want to feel like we’re a team.”

But that’s a lot to say. So, you encode it. You put all that pain into a single, sharp sentence.

What comes out is:
“You never do anything around here.”

A whole inner world, reduced to six words.

The “Decoding” Disaster

Now it reaches your partner. They don’t see the “package” you just sent; they only hear the noise. They don’t have access to your exhaustion or your need for love. They take your six words and decode them through their own filters—their own history, their wounds, and their survival instincts.

In their mind, your request for help is translated as:

• “I’m being attacked.”
• “I’m a failure.”
• “Nothing I do is ever enough.”

So, they fire back from their own survival logic:

“All you ever do is complain.”

And suddenly you’re fighting.

Not about presence.
Not about exhaustion.
Not about needing closeness.

Most conflicts aren’t about the trash, the tone, or the unreturned text message.

They’re about two people mistaking their interpretation for truth.

We speak as if words are facts.
We argue as if our individual perspective is universal.
We listen just enough to defend, not enough to understand.

You and your partner are reacting to meanings the other never intended to send.

You’re fighting about the decoded symbols.

This is why communication feels so hard.

Not because people are bad at talking.
But because translation is happening on both ends.

And the translators were shaped by:

• childhood dynamics
• trauma and unmet needs
• past relationships
• cultural rules
• emotional states in the moment

So the same sentence can land as:

care
attack
rejection
control
or love

depending on who hears it.

There isn’t one (relative) reality in a relationship.

There are at least two.

What you see isn’t what your partner sees.
What you mean isn’t always what they hear.

And what you’re fighting over is often just two mismatched codes colliding midair.

Just symbols being confused for the thing itself.

Like trying to smoke a painted pipe.