My partner and I say, unjokingly, that if it weren’t for dating apps we never would have met. We’re different in many ways, with divergent backgrounds, interests, musical tastes and social-media diets. While our differences meant we needed help getting together, staying together has been easy – perhaps because we have something that researchers have deemed valuable in relationships: a ‘shared reality’.
Psychology researchers define a shared reality as the perception that you share with another person many of the same feelings, attitudes and beliefs about the world. If, for example, you and a partner discuss a horror movie you’ve watched together, and it turns out that you both found particular parts scary and other bits a little silly, you’d feel a sense of shared reality about this movie. It’s the impression that the other person is seeing what you’re seeing and that you’re processing it in a similar way. This can apply to all sorts of shared experiences.
Previous research has shown that having a shared reality is related to greater relationship satisfaction and commitment. Most recently, researchers found that romantic partners who experienced a higher sense of a shared reality tended to report a greater sense of meaning in life. They also reported feeling less uncertainty when faced with stressful life and world events.
For me, it’s reassuring to have someone whose experience of the world overlaps with mine – especially in moments when I doubt my own reading of a situation. When someone’s humour at a party doesn’t sit right with me but rouses rounds of laughter, that incongruence and self-doubt can feel uncomfortable. When my partner, unprompted, later admits he didn’t enjoy it either, we both sigh in relief and talk about why. It’s a grounding process, one that confirms, time after time, that neither of us is alone in seeing things the way we do.
