Right Mind Relationships
The two halves of the human brain are physically separate from each other, except for a connecting organ that is about one inch in diameter. Each half responds to the world in its own way:
Right mind
Sustained attention
Hard to deceive
Understanding
Broad focus
Connection
Complexity
Caring
Left mind
Control
Analysis
Abstraction
Manipulation
Simplification
Narrow Focus
Easily deceived
Human relationships rely on the right mind’s ability to connect and understand other humans. The left mind sees people as a problem to be solved or a tool to be used.
When you fall in love, you see your partner with your right mind. There was something unique and miraculous about that person. As a relationship matures, your left mind probably took over, and you started to see your partner as a tool to be manipulated, and as a problem to be solved.
The left mind is good at stepping away from the complexity of the real world and focusing on a single problem that needs to be solved. Without the left brain’s ability to control the world we would not have houses, cars, or technology.
The right mind is good at connecting with and understanding other people. It’s also good at looking at the whole picture, and staying grounded in reality. The right mind can always answer the question “what is most important right now.”
The left mind has a tendency to get obsessesed with one particular problem, even if that problem isn’t very important.
The left mind doesn’t care about other people.
The right mind is good at feeling, expressing, and understanding emotion, with the exception of anger, which is the left mind’s specialty. The left mind uses anger as a way to manipulate other people.
Your left mind will always see your partner as a problem to be solved, not a person to care about. It will never be able to focus on the most important problem in the relationship, because it’s not capable of looking at the relationship as a whole.
Relationships thrive when the right mind is in charge, and they die when the left mind is in charge.
Want to learn more? Read or listen to Ian McGilchrist’s short book Ways of Attending
