In year 18 of my marriage, I conducted a brief sexual relationship with a woman in my office. It lasted roughly one month from “hello” to “goodbye.” When my wife asked me if I was having an affair, I admitted that I was. And when she asked me to end it, I did.

Those are the raw facts. That was story number one. But there were two more stories.

Story number 2 was my own story about the raw events. In my own story, I was the agrieved party. My wife and I shared the role of Villain.

Why did I cheat? Because I felt miserable in my marriage? Why was I miserable? Because my wife didn’t respect me and didn’t want sex. Why didn’t she respect me? Because I failed to live up to her expectations? Why did I fail her expectations? Because she was a self-consumed, neurotic, immature, female suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.

NOTE: Everything in the paragraph above was “my story about the story.” Not raw facts. They were “true” inasmuch as they were my description of my own experience. But they were not “true” in the same way the raw facts were true.

Story number 3 was her story about the raw events. The villain in her story was me, and she was the agrieved party. I was a sex-addict. I was oblivious to her needs. I was self-absorbed. And so on, and so on.

It took another 8 years of hell for us to split up. And it wasn’t until the year after we split that I realized the truth. There were 3 different true stories about our marriage and its end.

Any time two people share an experience, three different stories emerge. The first story is the raw facts: “what actually happened.” Then, each person creates their own story about the raw facts.

We humans never limit our own stories to the raw events. We include our own actions, emotions, desires, thoughts, and beliefs into our stories. And we make guesses about the other person. We tell stories about what they were doing, feeling, wanting, believing, and thinking.

We tend to believe that the raw facts are “the real story.” But that’s a mistake. All three stories are “the real story.”

My experience of my wife was real. My wife’s experience of me was real. Those experiences were in conflict and caused both of us a lot of pain.

A successful love relationship requires that each partner’s story is complementary. When the stories start to diverge, the relationship is in danger.

We did not recognize that our stories were diverging. We only knew we were in pain. And the stories continued to diverge the longer we lived together. In time, it became impossible for our stories to merge, and we had to split.

TexasDom was in the same situation many years ago. Yet he saved his marriage. How?

He and his wife found a way to tell themselves a brand new story about the raw facts. Instead of stories that diverged, they each created complementary stories about their experience. And with complementary stories, they created a brand new marriage.

Want a successful relationship? Be aware of the three stories. And make sure that the story you tell complements the story your significant other tells.

If it doesn’t, either split up, or do what TexasDom did: create new stories for yourself.