Over and over in my interviews with people who remained in estrangements, I heard the term “reality.” At the risk of redundancy, each person’s reality is the real reality, and the other’s view is biased, reconstructed, or delusional. I discovered in my studies that one of the major barriers to reconnection is the urge to align two views of the past. Many people remain estranged for that reason alone: The other person will not give up his or her view of past events and subscribe to the “correct” one.
