As a service designer, I often hear stories that don’t align with the brief I’ve been given. It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s often why I’ve been commissioned, but what people say they do (or think they do) often differs greatly from their actual behaviour.
For some people, attitudes are more important than facts. If they believe something to be true, for them, it may as well be.
However, gaps between perception and reality can be very dangerous for anyone stuck in those gaps, especially if those gaps are not of their making.
To bring this to life, I’d like to share the story of a close friend who I’ve been helping for a number of years. I won’t name anyone, of course, but what I’m sharing is very real and has been deeply painful.
My friend was in a long-term relationship with a man. They have three children together. He’s an architect, university lecturer and wannabee local councillor. So, by most public standards, he will appear respectable and intelligent (the perception).
Scratch the surface – read his self-important emails, outrageous texts or pompous letters to authorities, as I have – and you’ll see an altogether different man. My friend lived under his coercive control for years (the reality).
On the eve of the first Covid lockdown, she did everything society tells victims to do (another perception). On police advice, she left with her children. She sought advice. She reached out to social care. These steps ultimately backfired as they were later used against her, not just by her ex-partner but in court too (another reality).
Her ex-partner used his authority to twist the truth, deflect blame and dismantle her credibility; something he continues to do to this day without consequence (fact).
Early in the case, I helped my friend construct a letter to social care. It was a fair but factual appeal. Her ex-partner, she explained, left the children unsupervised, discredited her to their children, sent harassing messages and controlled her finances.
The ask was simple: please help this stop, please help my children and please help us draft a parenting plan.
After a brief review, social care’s conclusion amounted to this: both parents needed to communicate better. In other words, sort it out yourselves.
Alas, you can’t reason with a narcissist and, instead of prompting change, the response emboldened her ex-partner to escalate his harassment into every part of her life, from her attempts to find work to their children’s schooling.
There was no comeback and, fast forward five years, little has improved. The children’s behaviour has declined and my friend is traumatised.
I usually try to see all sides before drawing conclusions but, on this occasion, I want to say what I have seen with my own eyes: we assume responses to issues like domestic abuse will be robust, victim-centred and trauma-informed. In this case, it wasn’t.
When the system doesn’t truly understand the dynamics at play, it can reinforce abuse, and other problems, instead of stopping them.
And when assumptions, perceptions or incomplete information inform decisions, they will always fail people by overlooking what’s really happening.
Words may lie, but actions will always tell the truth. That’s how systems close the gap between perception and reality: by responding to what actually happens.