I don’t buy into psychics or people who claim to have predicted Sept 11 or the Kennedy assassination, but I’m getting more and more convinced that married couples (or other couples in long term relationships, gay or straight) tend to develop a sixth sense with each other.
Case in point…I had to give Ivylad some cash today because we thought he might have to make a three hour drive to pick up our daughter, who’d been injured at her judo tournament (turned out to be a sprained shoulder, arm’s in a sling, she’s fine). Between all the excitement and worry and waiting for the phone calls and then deciding she’d be okay to ride back with her team, the money completely slipped my mind.
So, we’re relaxing after dinner, watching U-571 and just hanging out. The movie ends, and Ivylad gets up off the couch.
As he does, I mention, “I’ll need that money back.”
He starts laughing, saying, “That’s why I got up…to get you the money out of my wallet!” Now, it might have been a coincidence, but we hadn’t discussed it at all during the day or evening and I had completely forgotten about it until he stood up.
So, Dopers in long term relationships/marriages…do you find yourselves finishing each other’s sentences, making the exact same comment at the same time, and other interesting eerie bits?
Yes, even though I can’t think of an example at the moment.
My Mom and I used to even freak each other out. We could finish each other’s sentences, when the subject hadn’t been mentioned.
What pisses me off with my husband, is when I can’t get the words out, and he can’t read my frickin’ mind. We’re getting there, though. We’ve only been married for five years, for God’s sake.
Absolutely. My husband and I do this all of the time.
If I’m at work and he calls me and says how about x for supper, its usually what I am thinking of.
Just the other night on my way home from work I had a craving for Pogos. Got home, Pogos for dinner!! LOL We RARELY have Pogos. Maybe 5 times in the 11 years we’ve been together.
We finish each others sentences a lot. Make the same comments about things at the same time. It’s quite freaky.
Ok, as the unmarried one so far, allow me to say… bullshit.
Oh, I don’t doubt you know each other well enough to have a better idea what your partner is thinking than anyone else. Nor even WHEN your partner is thinking those thoughts.
But that is in no way psychic, a “sixth sense”, or any other supernatural anything. It is knowledge and experience. Period.
That’s what I think. Often the same things are on our minds or we’ll start to say something at the same time but I don’t find that surprising because we share the same day to day home life. If he’s late and I start to worry and just then he calls to tell me he’s going to be late. that’s not psychic - he just knows that if he’s more than an hour late getting home that I’ll probably start to worry.
Yes and no. The “finishing sentences” thing has gotten to be a sore point in that whenever I do such a thing for her, it infuriates her that she’s not being given time to complete her own thought. So I have cut way back on verbalizing what I’m doing in my mind and just wait until she finishes saying what I knew a minute or longer earlier she was going to say. Less friction, you see.
Where it’s not a problem is where we will spot a resemblance between someone and someone else. Nine times out of ten when we see that sort of thing we just have to say the name of the look-alike and get agreement from the other that it’s true. Often it will be a blend of two or more components of look-alikes. One person’s eyes and another’s chin sort of thing. We’ll have that sort of thing several times a night, mostly with people on TV. It’s amazing how few facial features are truly unique to individuals!
As for the OP’s incident with the money, my take is that something you both saw or heard triggered at that same moment a train of thought leading back to the money. That happens with us quite often.
I’m not claiming anything supernatural. I do find it a bit eerie that we are so attuned to each other…I mean, why should my husband standing up remind me that he needs to give me my money back? I don’t know, but it did.
So, rather than debate WHAT it is, can we just instead share the freaky occurrences and enjoy them?
I add the emphasis since the claim is not that people develop a special ability, rather that their relationship evolves to the point that a new form of communication seems to develop.
On the other hand, the use of the word Telepathy in the title does suggest a quasi-psychic quality to that communication and it seems fair to challenge that notion.
I have not been in a long term relationship for years, so I can’t speak the experience myself. Of course, by the same token, all of the testimonials so far have been anecdotal.
As for “shar[ing] the freaky occurrences and enjoy[ing] them.” I would offer that my Aunt had a theory that marriage eroded half of your brain so that it took two people to finish one sentence.
‘’… that every time Wolverine’s adamantium claws come out, he experiences pain? Never.’’
I’m trying to remember what it was the other night. I was riding in the car with my husband and my in-laws, and I said something opinionated, which my husband then directly refuted with an established fact.
Without even altering my pace or conversational tone, I said something along the lines of, ‘‘I don’t acknowledge what you say.’’
My husband and I were quiet for a moment and then we both broke into hysterics. Father in law said, ‘‘Am I missing something here? Is this some kind of inside joke?’’
It wasn’t an inside joke, it was a shared moment of profound hilarity that arose through the accumulation of years of interacting with one another. It was based on the environmental climate of events that preceded it but not an allusion to them. I wouldn’t expect anyone else in the world to find it hysterical, none but the two of us, as we’ve invented our own brand of humor through years of boredom.
I’m pretty sure they did research on this. Married couples by far, as a demographic, use way more nonverbal communication with one another than any other social group. Their conversations are in many cases incomprehensible to the outside observer. Probably what makes it seem ‘‘freaky’’ is that we’re often not aware of how much we communicate without words.
It never fails to amaze me the lengths people will go to, to force experiences they don’t understand into familiar frameworks.
This happens with a lot of people living together - parents & children, siblings, spouses; it is some mysterious magical supernatural event that contradicts all sciences and proves young earth creationism?
No.
Is it triggered by non-verbal communication? Probably, sometimes. By an unrecognized external stimulus? Probably, sometimes.
Is it always triggered by something external? I doubt it.
It happens to us a lot. It tends to happen when we are relaxed, in a state near reverie - driving in good conditions, watching t.v. or hanging in the garden on a lazy afternoon. (Never happens in a plane, bad driving conditions, … never when we are highly focused, or under stress)
Nonverbal communication? Not when we are sitting next to each other, looking elsewhere.
Unrecognized stimulus? Why would a squirrel running across the fence trigger thought of the same ISO standard in both of us?
When this happens, people do not tend to think ‘It’s magic!’; being pattern seeker, they tend to try to puzzle out the trigger. Sometimes, they can’t find one. Sometimes there isn’t one.
Yup - together almost 20 years. Our brains sort of sync up from time to time after long years of shared thoughts and experiences. Would probably sound like telepathy to an outsider.
I think, too, that it comes from knowing someone very well, and spending so much time with them, and more than that, TALKING to them until you know the inner workings of their brain as well as you do your own. I do this only occasionally with my husband (we’ve been together for 5 years, married for 2), but I do it all the time with my brother. He and I are very close; we complete one another’s sentences constantly. We just know each other’s brains. One time he came out of his room and asked my husband and I “Who’s that guitarist who isn’t Joe Walsh?”, and I immediately answered Peter Frampton. I don’t know anything about music and I don’t know if the two are connected, but I know my brother’s brain and I knew that was the right answer.
