“The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.”

Brian Greene

Perplexity is a state of mind and feeling that promotes being completely confused, puzzled, or unsure because something is hard to understand or hard to solve (1).  Whether you are starting a new relationship, in a long-term relationship, or ending a relationship, there is a good chance that perplexity is alive and well in your world. 

Why are relationships so challenging?  What creates the inevitable perplexity of two people trying to understand each other?

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”  - Carl Jung

Understanding

What about something simple like just showing kindness to someone?  Do we really see kindness the same?  Some see kindness as enabling or condescending.  Others see kindness as being totally honest while others see honesty as cruel. 

We see kindness as different flavours.  Is this understanding concept not already very perplexing?  What else is happening in relationships that makes them truly perplexing?

Psychological Peripheral Narrowing (PN)

When relationships clash something happens.  Both partners or friends experience higher levels of stress.  What does this stress do?  It creates a peripheral narrowing in the brain.  That is, a tunnelled vision occurs in each person due to the increased stress.

This would not be a problem except for one thing.  The one thing is that the brain now has a retrieval system that is compromised.  What I know has now become unknown to me.  I cannot remember or retrieve my thoughts or sometimes even my feelings.

Have you ever been stressed so much you could not remember something you have always known?  Have you ever been lost, and due to the increased stress, had no idea what to do next?  These examples are what psychological narrowing does to the brain.  What does it do to relationships?

PN makes relationships even more perplexing.  Your stress or my stress, depending on who is feeling it the most, will compromise any ability to relate.  The retrieval system is not at full speed. 

You will not be totally present as yourself when you are experiencing peripheral narrowing.  This can feel very perplexing to both the sender and the receiver of the communication that follows. 

Motivational Reasoning (MR)

Have you ever had a disagreement in a relationship that made no sense to you? Maybe you experienced motivated reasoning, which is a psychological process where people use unconscious biases, selective memory, and skewed logic to reach a desired conclusion.

Instead of letting facts dictate outcomes, people cherry-pick evidence to defend a predetermined belief.  People are motivated to find the reasons they are looking for regardless of the facts.

In a relationship MR can be lethal.  When you reach an impasse with one another you are sidetracked into illogic and unconscious bias.  Over time the confusion mounts and PN will probably kick in as well.  Now how perplexed are you?

“Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.”  - Carl von Clausewitz

Relationship Clarity

Be concise and eliminate unnecessary details.  Provide only essential information.  This prevents information overload.  Focus on the central idea of your message.  Everything other than your central idea is superfluous.

Be consistent in your message.  A consistent style breeds familiarity, trust and confidence in what you are communicating.

Be aware of the concepts of peripheral narrowing and motivated reasoning when they are operating in your relationships.  They are speed bumps on the road to an unhappy relationship.

 References

1-Cambridge Dictionary (2026).

2-Frye. D. (2025) Motivated Reasoning: Confirmation Bias.  Psychology Today, Nov. 13.