Consider a hypothetical couple: Cathy and Max. Cathy tells Max she feels like it’s been too long since they had sex, and Max responds that it seems to him like they just had sex. They look at a calendar to see who is right, and remember they had sex seven days earlier. Both feel justified: Cathy says, “See, it has been a long time!” Max replies: “I knew it was recently!”
The author John Updike once wrote: “Sex is like money; only too much is enough.” But in long-term relationships, couples often disagree about if they’re doing it too much or too little. Though it has been a week since Cathy and Max’s last sexy date night, they are respectively experiencing their own “subjective time”. Subjective time is a common but under-recognized source of strife between lovers, friends, co-workers and family members. In relationships of all kinds, when conflicts arise, ask yourself: are we living in the same timeline?
