The Erotics of Understanding

The Erotics of Understanding

Are we being seen as we intended, rather than as we are assumed to be?

Helen Higgins

Oct 12, 2026

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“I know

exactly

what you mean.”

I can think of few other sentences that are more intimate than that. It’s not necessarily about romance, or signalling attraction, or even because they guarantee agreement in some way. No. It’s intimate because it offers something that feels precious and rare: recognition.

Most of us spend our lives trying to bridge the distance between ourselves and other people, and we don’t realise how much of our lives are spent translating ourselves.

We soften opinions so they won’t sound arrogant.

We explain ambitions so they won’t sound unrealistic.

We carefully clarify jokes, intentions, boundaries, and vulnerabilities because we have learned from experience just how easily they can be misunderstood. We’re capable of constructing entire identities out of language and gesture, hoping that someone, somewhere, will understand not only what we’re saying, but what we’re trying to say.

These aren’t always the same thing.

The philosopher Martin Buber wrote that “all real living is meeting”. What he recognised was that relationships don’t develop just through contact. We pass strangers in supermarkets and share offices with colleagues for years without ever truly meeting them. Buber is talking about how meeting another person requires a moment of genuine encounter, a brief collapse of the distance between one consciousness and another.

When that collapse of distance happens, it can - it

does

- feel electric.

This is, I think, where attraction and understanding become confused. We often assume that crushes emerge from physical beauty, charisma, confidence, or the simple fact we’re exposed to repeated contact. Most crushes probably begin with attention or physical appeal, but some begin at the exact moment another person sees beyond our words and reaches the meaning underneath them. That’s when we’re most likely to leave the conversation convinced we’re attracted to them when, in reality, we’re responding to the experience of being truly seen.

They finish our sentence correctly. They hear the intention behind the words we choose. We leave the interaction feeling unusually awake. For a tantalising moment, we stop translating.

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A lot of the time, this is how our relationships operate. People interpret us through their assumptions, experiences, fears, desires, and projections, and they respond to the version of us that exists in their imagination. I’m guilty of it, as are you. We all are, so I repeatedly find myself considering the sentiment that novelist Anaïs Nin noted: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Understanding is different because understanding requires curiosity. It also requires restraint, though, and resisting the urge to simplify another person into something easier to comprehend. I notice it when I make an offhand comment about work, family, ambitions, or my fears, and someone responds to what I’ve meant. Suddenly, the conversation moves beyond explanation, and I find myself thinking, “Yes, exactly”, because they’ve grasped the shape of the thought itself. The relief is often disproportionate to the interaction. You leave a ten-minute conversation but remain thinking about it for days because, for a moment, there was nothing being managed, categorised, corrected, or interpreted.

The opposite experience can be devastating in a slow and corrosive way.

Have you ever known the feeling of sitting in a conversation and realising that the person opposite you has decided who you are before you’ve finished speaking? Have you ever watched in real time as your words arrive distorted, as though they have been translated into another language before they reached their destination? We can all recall a moment when we left someone else disappointed because we didn’t live up to their version of us, had been cast as stronger than we feel, been assumed to be softer than we are, or simpler than we know ourselves to be. Then there’s having your motives assigned to you, or having your complexity edited down until it becomes something more convenient for others to accept. The Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing observed that “the range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.” I’d add that the range of our relationships is limited by what we fail to notice in one another or what we simply refuse to acknowledge.

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That’s the dominant reason that I believe that misunderstanding isn’t always cruelty. Often, it’s just inattentiveness. People stop listening. They assume they already know, and in assuming, they paradoxically substitute certainty for curiosity.

The result of all this is that many of us spend years carrying around versions of ourselves that other people have created:

The difficult student.

The eccentric colleague.

The reliable friend.

The intelligent one.

The resilient one.

The confident one.

The shy child.

The dedicated academic.

Everyone has at least some version of these labels attached to them by others, and whilst these descriptions aren’t necessarily false, the problem is that none of them is complete either. After a while, these versions become heavy or difficult to continually combat. We stop correcting the misconceptions. We grow tired of saying, “That’s not what I meant,” or “That’s not really me.” Eventually, some people know us so poorly that explaining ourselves feels more exhausting than remaining misunderstood. We want to scream at them that human beings aren’t categories. They’re paragraphs. Entire chapters. Sometimes entire libraries. We don’t, though.

This is why intellectual intimacy feels so powerful. Intelligence alone can impress someone, but understanding transforms them.

Brené Brown writes that connection exists when people feel “seen, heard, and valued.” Understanding creates a fleeting sense of alignment between our inner world and what another person perceives, so when someone has understood our words and the meaning beneath them, we experience the rare relief of being known as we intended rather than as we have been assumed to be. For a world increasingly built on algorithms and first impressions, this feels radical, and it can help us to grow, reaffirming that who we truly are is recognised in the right ways.

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We often forget that understanding another person is slow work. It requires attention, patience, humility, and the willingness to discover that your original assumptions were incomplete. I’d wager that’s why understanding carries an erotic quality to it, even outside romance.

I don’t mean erotic in the narrow sense. I mean it in the sense of aliveness, which is how I define it.

The Greek concept of

eros

was never solely confined to sex. It described a force of attraction as a movement towards connection, beauty, and meaning, so to be understood is to feel drawn out of isolation and into a relationship where someone sees you. It may not be perfect or complete, but accurate enough that you feel less alone.

I suspect this is what many of us are looking for when we seek friendship, love, community, or conversation. Beneath all the complexities of modern life exists a surprisingly simple desire: to be known without being reduced or judged. When it happens, whether in a friendship, a marriage, a brief conversation, or a message that arrives unexpectedly one morning, we remember it.

All the majority of us have wanted from one another is to be understood without having to endlessly explain ourselves.

In a world full of assumptions, there is nothing more intimate than someone saying, with complete sincerity:

“I know

exactly

what you mean.”

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