The three screens of our choices

Changing our method begins by looking at what it builds before we act.

Chapter 004 · 8 min

The three screens of our choices

Imagine that before every important decision, three screens appear in front of you.

On the first, you see yourself after having made the choice. You do not necessarily feel joy. Perhaps you have gained nothing spectacular. But you are at peace. You know that this decision was necessary, that it protected something important or that it kept you from betraying yourself.

On the second, you see yourself at peace. You also feel joy and self-respect. This choice allowed you to move forward. It strengthened your convictions, improved your life or preserved a relationship that mattered. You almost thank the person you were at the moment of deciding, because that person thought about the person you were going to become.

On the third, you see yourself with regrets. You discover the wounds that your decision added to those you already had. Some will disappear quickly. Others will take root and will require a great deal of time, effort and courage to be healed. You then ask yourself why you did not see what now seems so obvious.

If you could choose one of these three screens directly, which would you take?

No one would willingly choose the third. Yet we often choose it in another way: not because we desire to suffer, but because at the moment of deciding, we refuse to look.

We mute the sound. We look away. We let anger, fear, pride or obsession take up all the space. The screens are still there, but we no longer want to know what they are trying to show us.

A decision never comes alone

We think we are choosing a word, a silence, a forgiveness, a separation, a revenge or a new chance. But no choice comes alone. It arrives with a set of consequences.

We are not only choosing to answer a hurtful message. We are also choosing what our answer risks adding to the conflict.

We are not only choosing to believe a new promise. We are also choosing the time, the hope and the trust that we are going to invest once again.

We are not only choosing to stay. We are also choosing, as far as we can know them, the conditions in which we are going to continue living.

We are not only choosing to leave. We are also choosing a loss, an upheaval, a possible freedom, a rebuilding and what this decision will then require.

A choice is a complete package. We cannot take its benefit and leave its bill on the table.

Yet that is sometimes what we try to do. We want to say the word that will relieve us without receiving the distance it will create. We want to keep a person without looking at what their presence costs us. We want to take revenge without becoming someone who has chosen to make someone suffer. We want to stay without enduring, to leave without losing and to decide without giving anything up.

But to choose is necessarily to close certain possibilities in order to make others real.

When emotion turns off the screens

Anger generally shows us only one benefit: the pleasure of answering back, of reasserting our truth or of not letting the other person win.

Fear shows us only one urgency: not to lose.

Pride asks us only one question: who is right?

Obsession presents us with only one goal: to obtain what we want, even when what we want no longer wants us.

These emotions are not useless. They signal a wound, a danger, an attachment or a value under threat. But they become dangerous when they alone are granted the right to decide.

Being right does not protect us from the consequences of our response. We can be right about the other person's fault and wrong in the way we build what comes next. We can win an argument and lose a part of the trust. We can obtain apologies without obtaining change. We can keep the relationship while gradually losing our peace.

So the real question is not only: "Am I right?"

It is also: "What am I building with this rightness?"

The other person's fault and our responsibility for what comes next

Looking at our screens does not mean taking on the other person's fault.

If our partner betrays us, the betrayal belongs to them. If this person humiliates us, the words spoken remain their responsibility. If they lie, hit, show contempt or violate a clearly understood commitment, our introspection does not turn their act into a shared fault.

But after the other person's act, a part of our story still begins.

What do we do with what we now know? What place do we continue to give this person? What access do we keep? What boundaries do we make real? What do we want to verify before believing again? What comes next do we build from this truth?

Responsibility does not say to the wounded person: "You caused what happened to you."

It says to them: "What happened to you must not become the sole author of your future."

This distinction is essential. Without it, responsibility becomes an additional accusation. With it, it becomes a power again.

We do not always choose the first pain. Nor do we control our partner's will, love or inner decisions. But we can gradually take back a share of power over our responses and over the life we still want to make possible.

Responsibility does not deny what the other person did to us. It refuses to also abandon to them the ownership of everything that will come next.

Silence can also have a screen

Let us imagine an argument.

Our partner has just said something unjust. We feel the response rising. We know exactly where to strike. We know a weakness, an old regret, a secret confided or the sentence that will hurt as much as we are hurting.

On one screen, we answer. For a few seconds, we feel the relief of having hit back. Then the argument grows. The original subject disappears. Two new wounds now demand reparation.

On another screen, we fall silent for a moment. Not because the other person is right. Not because the problem is insignificant. We simply withdraw our participation in the escalation. We will return to the substance when we are able to speak without turning our pain into a weapon.

This silence does not solve everything. Used to punish, it can become another form of relational violence. Chosen as a pause, then followed by a sincere return to the problem, it can preserve the possibility of understanding and acting.

So the question is not: "Should I always answer or always stay silent?"

It is: "Which response gives this problem the best chance of being truly addressed?"

Staying and leaving have several screens

We sometimes look for a decision that will hurt no one. It does not always exist.

Leaving can cause pain while protecting the future. Staying can require effort while allowing a rebuilding. Conversely, leaving can be an escape that carries the same mechanism into the next relationship, and staying can prolong a hope that no fact supports any longer.

No word — staying, leaving, forgiving, waiting — automatically carries the right answer.

It is the history, the acts, the efforts, the reciprocity, the seriousness, the repetition and the trajectory that give these words their value.

If we choose to stay, let us look at what staying still makes it possible to build. Is there evidence of change? Is responsibility acknowledged? Do words produce acts? Does the relationship still contain enough value to give the effort a direction?

If we choose to leave, let us look at what we are seeking to protect, what we must accept losing and what we want to learn so as not to rebuild the same suffering elsewhere under another face.

The three screens do not decide in our place. They only keep us from pronouncing a decision whose full reality we refuse to look at.

Our peace is not the only screen of the couple

A strictly personal decision can sometimes be right because it restores our peace. But a relational decision rarely concerns only one person.

In a couple, three realities must enter the field: what the choice will produce for us, what it will produce for our partner and what it will produce for the relationship we claim to be building together.

A decision can relieve us while needlessly destroying something in the other person. It can please our partner while gradually emptying us. It can satisfy each person in the immediate term while weakening the shared project.

Constantly sacrificing ourselves for the other person's peace is not a superior proof of love. Deciding solely according to our own peace is no more a proof of responsibility. Maintaining a relationship requires looking at both people and at that third space they are building together.

So the most responsible choice is not always the one that makes everyone immediately happy. It seeks the best possible direction while taking into account its costs and what it protects.

Sometimes, that decision will be a yes. Sometimes, it will be a no. Sometimes, it will give a new chance. Sometimes, it will withdraw an access that words alone were unable to protect.

The screens do not predict the future

We can never see everything.

We can make a serious decision and be deceived. We can examine the available facts and later discover information we did not know. We can act with a sincere intention and obtain a result different from the one we hoped for. The other person's freedom, accidents and unforeseen events will continue to exist.

Consulting the three screens therefore does not consist of becoming a prophet. It is about looking at the probable direction of a choice based on what we already know.

What story is repeating?

Which promises have been followed by acts?

Which emotion is trying to decide in our place?

What problem do we really want to solve?

Who will receive the benefits and who will pay the price?

What are we passing on to the person we will be tomorrow?

A good decision does not guarantee a future without pain. It looks far enough ahead not to claim afterward that all its foreseeable consequences were invisible.

A useful screen keeps a place for the unknown

The three screens serve to broaden our view, not to choose a happy image and then take it for a promise. Before a decision, we can see a likely benefit, a cost that is already certain and several outcomes that are still uncertain. These elements do not deserve the same degree of certainty.

Let us imagine a couple considering reducing a paid activity in order to find more time together. The freed-up time is a concrete possibility. The rediscovered closeness remains a construction: it also depends on what the two people will do with those hours. The reduction in income, for its part, requires precise examination. We must neither sell closeness as an automatic result nor treat every hour not worked as a loss without value.

An honest trailer also raises the question of the other person: do they know the price our option will make them bear? Do they share the benefit we are announcing? Can they propose a less costly form that keeps the same goal? The chosen scenario becomes more solid when it survives these clarifications, not when it forbids them from being raised.

After the trial, we compare what we had planned with what we are experiencing. We can adjust the arrangement without declaring that the desire for closeness was absurd. The need, the means and the result remain three different things. What the screen teaches us must be able to modify the next choice, but must not turn every surprise into a retroactive accusation.

The gift made to my future

What immediate relief does my choice promise me?

What bill might this relief leave to my peace and to my relationship?

By repeating this choice, what habit am I offering to my future?

Which option, less pleasant today, would better protect what I love?

Will I still stand by this decision once the emotion has passed?