Projection in relationships is when part of what you see in someone close, often the part that irritates you, is coming from you. Their behaviour may be perfectly real; projection adds size and meaning to it. It never applies to a partner who frightens, controls or hurts you.
The screen goes up on the lawn in the middle of the compound in Al Khawaneej, a white sheet stretched between two poles, with a projector humming on a trestle table at the back. Imre and his wife have two folding chairs near the drinks stand.
The film is about an old man and a dog walking the length of a country. Imre has guessed the ending well before halfway.
His wife hasn't, or has and doesn't mind. In the last ten minutes she's crying, quietly, one hand flat under her nose, the light from the screen moving across her face.
He notices he's counting the minutes left. Then he notices something sharper. He's annoyed. Not with the film. With her. It's a dog, he wants to say. It isn't even real.
He doesn't say it. He gets up, buys a bottle of water he doesn't want, and stands by the stall while the credits roll, puzzled at himself. Her tears cost him nothing. They aren't aimed at him. And yet every few weeks something like this happens, an advert, a reunion on the news, a friend's farewell speech, and the same small flare goes off in him, far bigger than anything she's done.
Walking back to the chairs, he tries to remember the last time anything made him cry. He can't. Until now, it never occurred to him to wonder why.
What is projection in relationships?
Projection in relationships is seeing something of your own in a partner and reacting to it there, as if it were only theirs. Often it's a quality you've stopped allowing yourself, so meeting it in them stings more than it should. Their behaviour can be entirely real. Projection adds the size of your reaction, and part of its meaning.
If a partner, or anyone else, frightens you, threatens you, controls you or hurts you, that isn't projection, and nothing in this article asks you to look for it in yourself. Your safety comes first. In the UAE, the Dubai Foundation for Women and Children runs a free helpline, 800111, which its website describes as open 24/7. Elsewhere, contact a domestic abuse service where you live. If you're in immediate danger, call your local emergency services. It matters, too, that a doctor and a friend you trust know what's happening.
Everything below is about small, harmless things that get under your skin, the kind that hurt nobody.
What does the word projection mean?
Merriam-Webster defines projection as "the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects". It's also an idea from psychology, and a psychologist can give you the clinical account.
My own shorthand for it is three words I teach: perception is projection. I offer it as an invitation to check your own part in small things, never as an explanation for what anyone does to you.
Projection tends to keep your eyes on the other person, even when you mean to look inward. The Who Am I? masterclass, free with the code GIFT26, turns them round, toward whoever is doing the seeing. One caution about the guided twenty minutes at its end: if feeling unreal, or strangely apart from your own life, is something you know, or something you're in treatment for, check with your doctor before that part or skip it, and know you can stop it whenever you like. If that sounds like the right turn, Receive the Masterclass and keep it for a quiet day. Or read on.
Why does a small habit in someone close irritate me so much?
Sometimes it's because their habit touches something of yours that got buried.
Think of the projector on that trestle table. The sheet is real, and so is whatever's playing on it. But the picture comes from the box at the back. Imre's wife really is crying. What plays over her tears, the sense that this is too much and somebody ought to stop it, comes from behind his own eyes.
That's one kind of irritation, not every kind. Projection never means the other person isn't doing anything, and it's never the explanation when someone is actually harming you. Where it does apply, part of what you feel is yours, and that part is often a quality you put away.
It may be a way of being you stopped allowing yourself, for reasons that were sound back then. It went quiet, and after long enough it stopped feeling like yours. Then someone close does it freely. They cry at films, or ask for help without apologising, or laugh as loudly as they like. And whatever in you has been keeping that quality quiet watches them use it at no cost, and flares.
For Imre, the irritation is about more than the tears on the lawn. It's about a rule he's kept so long he's forgotten keeping it, broken in front of him every few weeks by someone who never signed it.
What you put away still belongs to you. You are not broken. You are buried.
Projection runs in the other direction as well. A quality you admire a little too much in someone can be yours, handed over for safekeeping, which I've looked at in how to stop putting people on a pedestal. The pull toward a certain type of person is covered separately in why the same type of partner keeps turning up.
Can "you're projecting" be used against you?
Yes, and it's worth saying plainly.
"You're just projecting" can be a way to close down a fair point. If you raise something real, a broken promise, money that went missing, a cruel remark in front of friends, and the answer is always that it's your issue, notice that it keeps happening. In the dictionary's sense, projection is something a person does with their own feelings: attributing them to someone else. Whether you're doing that is yours to check, if and when you choose. Nobody else gets to use the word to overrule what you see.
If the way someone uses words like these leaves you frightened, unsure what's real, or cut off from the people you trust, talk to someone outside the relationship: a doctor, a friend who's on your side, a domestic abuse service where you live, or, in the UAE, the helpline above. If you're in immediate danger, call your local emergency services.
This is a Journal piece, not therapy or medical treatment. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. Anyone in treatment of any kind should keep working with their doctor or therapist, and if you'd like support with anything here, a counsellor you see on your own can help you sort through it.
How can you check for projection with small, safe irritations?
Try this check only with people you aren't in a relationship with: a stranger's habit, a colleague's way of talking, a neighbour. Keep partners out of it, and never use it on anything anyone does to frighten, control, belittle or hurt you. If you can't tell whether something is safe, that's a reason to call a domestic abuse service, or the helpline above, and not a reason to use this exercise. If a memory that hurts turns up partway through, drop the check and ring a close friend or book time with a professional, telling them whatever you'd like them to know. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
- Pick one small moment. The man on the metro eating with his mouth open. A colleague who talks through every slide twice. A neighbour singing on the balcony.
- Finish the sentence that starts "People shouldn't" in your head. Let it end however it ends, for example "People shouldn't take up that much room" or "People shouldn't sing where others can hear." That's the rule they've just broken.
- Ask whether you keep that rule for yourself. Yes, no and not sure are all answers, and so is a sentence that won't finish. You don't need to know its origin.
What does the Who Am I? masterclass ask of you?
- You're curious about the one doing the seeing. Projection is about what you see in other people. The masterclass turns to the one who sees, and its page separates the two like this: "There is the experience. And there is the one experiencing."
- There's room in your week for ninety minutes. First a ten-page written guide, then a video of me taking you through each idea, then the guided part.
- The guided part fits where you are. It asks for about twenty minutes of stillness. Anyone who has gone through stretches of feeling detached or unreal, or as if they were watching their life from a distance, or who's being treated for that, should ask their doctor before doing that part, or simply skip it. And whoever you are, you can pause the audio whenever you choose, open your eyes, press your feet into the floor and call someone you trust.
Under each of its buttons, the page repeats one line: "USD 297 · Yours free, use code GIFT26 at checkout".
If a small irritation keeps pointing somewhere, let that be the reason to begin. Take the ninety minutes on a quiet day, and take them soon.
I'm grateful to everyone who has let me hear their story.
Talya Whitaker, from the RS Method's client stories: "There are no words for how this has changed my life, changed every cell of my being."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. A stranger's habit makes a good first try: notice the rule it broke. Receive the Masterclass