There’s a popular saying in marriage therapy: you can be right, or you can be married.
It points to two deeply human needs:
to be right: to feel internally coherent, intact, certain of our experience and
to be in a relationship: to feel close to someone, to be understood, to depend and be depended on.
But often, without realising, we sacrifice the second at the altar of the first and we choose coherence over connection.
This is what psychological rigidity looks like in everyday life.
Although it is often mistaken for stubbornness and ego, it is mostly a persistent need to hold on to a particular version of reality, because loosening it would feel like losing something essential within ourselves.
What does it look like?
It rarely looks dramatic. More often, it shows up in small, familiar moments:
You’re in a conversation, and something feels off.
A tone, a pause, a choice of words.
You interpret it quickly:
“They’re being dismissive.”
“They don’t really care.”
“This is exactly how this always goes.”
And once that interpretation lands, it hardens and in that, there is no compassionate flexibility left to ask what they mean and we start explaining what they did.
You listen, but only to respond.
You clarify, but only to be understood.
You stay in the interaction but the curiosity has already left.
From the outside, it can look like:
needing to finish the argument properly
circling back to prove your point
feeling unsettled until the other person “gets it”
being technically right, but emotionally unavailable
From the inside, it doesn’t feel like rigidity.
It feels like:
“I’m just seeing things clearly.”
What takes place?
What we casually call “rigidity” is not a single trait. It is a process that unfolds across time.
We build internal maps of the world:
“This is how people behave”
“This is what this kind of situation means”
“This is why this keeps happening to me”
And to be fair, these maps are not arbitrary. They are built from real experiences, repeated often enough to feel like law. But gradually, almost invisibly:
the map becomes more authoritative than the moment in front of you.
We may stop encountering people as they are and start encountering them as instances of what we already know.
The mind as a legal system
In a legal system, once precedent is established, future cases are not evaluated from scratch per se. They are interpreted through what has already been decided. Our mind does something similar.
A few early experiences of inconsistency or hurt → A precedent is formed: “People are unreliable” → New interactions are judged accordingly
Over time, your inner world develops something like case law. Evidence that supports the precedent is admitted easily and evidence that contradicts it is questioned, qualified, or dismissed.
Why being “right” matters so much
Winning an argument is only superficial, being right genuinely stabilises our world.
It allows our past experiences to make sense.
It reduces ambiguity in the present.
It gives us a clear emotional position to stand in.
Letting go of that certainty causes cognitive load, yes but it can also feel like losing your footing, misreading something important or having to reconsider things you thought you had already understood. Going through all this trouble in an already overstimulating world, takes away from energy that our system thinks could be dedicated elsewhere for survival. So of course, it holds its easy ground.
The problem of being partly right
The hardest rigidity to shift is the one that is partly right.
If our model were completely wrong, it would collapse quickly. But most rigid frameworks are built on statistical truths. Yes, some people are unreliable, some environments are exploitative and some patterns do repeat.
Rigidity emerges when these truths are extended beyond their domain. It turns:
“This happens often”
into
“This is how things are”
This is overgeneralization under uncertainty. And because the base observation is valid, the system feels justified.
What to do instead?
The shift is less about becoming less intelligent, less perceptive, or less discerning.
It is more about changing how tightly you hold what you see.
1. Delay closure
Notice how quickly you move from:
“What happened” → “what it means”
Instead of finalising the meaning immediately, pause:
“This is what I’m making of it… but I might not have the full picture yet.”
This small delay keeps the system open.
2. Expand the frame
Instead of:
“This means X”
Try:
“This could mean X… or Y… or something I don’t yet understand”
This doesn’t mean you are replacing your interpretation, you are simply placing it alongside others. This creates room for both accuracy (that this system so greatly desires) and connection.
3. Reintroduce scale
Ask:
At what level is this true?
In this exact moment?
In this relationship?
Or as a general rule?
This prevents a single instance from becoming a worldview.
4. Stay in the relationship while uncertain
This is the hardest shift.
To remain in conversation, to stay open, even when you don’t yet have a clear interpretation.
Because often, what we call “being right” is actually:
having a finished explanation
And what relationships require is something else:
the ability to stay without one.
Very often, it is not that you are not right, or not partially right, but rather, what you need in order for the relationship to work better, is to get a sense of how they function, what is the truth for them. And to be able to listen to them, truly, openly - you need to stay open and not choose closed doors because they provide inner stability. Rigidity can trap you without realizing because it can feel like you did indeed evaluate, or you have proof for your position -but the key to finding whether you are being rigid or not, is not facts but rather, how you feel. Do you feel on edge? Closed off? Are your shoulders hunching up and are your arms crossed? There’s a reason that this posture is called “defensive”. If you are experiencing all these bodily cues, your body is treating the new information you’re getting as a threat. But not all novelty is a threat. Some new things also change us for the better - be it our relationship or for our own mental health.
Written by Aastha Lalan