Track 10
Throwing Love Down a Hole
June 28, 2026
✱1 “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
— William H. Whyte, Fortune, 1950
Have you ever tried to love someone who was convinced you never did?
Not because you didn’t. Not because you stopped. But because somewhere along the way the story they were telling themselves got louder than anything you could actually say out loud. And the louder their story got, the quieter your love became. Until one day you woke up and realized you had been throwing love down a hole for years......and never once hearing it land.
It’s been said that we don’t say what we think we say. We only ever say what was heard. If that’s true, then one of the greatest threats to any relationship isn’t what we meant......it’s the gap between what left our mouth and what arrived in their mind.
Because there are filters on both ends. There’s the one on the way out. Sounds like: “I never said that. I never said it like that. That’s not what I meant.” And then there’s the one on the way in. The one nobody talks about. The one built from every room they grew up in. Every voice that told them who they were. Every wound that taught them what to expect from love. And not to expect.
What if someone grew up in a house where people talked loudly and quickly and used big gestures because that was just passion......and the person they love grew up in a house where loud and quick and gesturing meant someone was about to get hurt? Same words. Same volume. Two completely different messages received.
✱2 We only ever say what was heard.
Two Beers with Leo
There’s an old Sufi teaching story about a man who spends years shouting his love across a river to the woman on the other bank. Every day he calls out. Every day she turns away.
One day a wise man sits beside him and says......you are not speaking to her. You are speaking to the river.
The river is the story she was already telling herself. It was there before you arrived. It will be there after you leave. And no amount of love, shouted loud enough, long enough, or honestly enough, crosses a river that lives entirely inside someone else’s head.
—Leo.
And consider: what they hear is shaped by everything that happened before you ever opened your mouth.
River from the Raw
“Throwing love down a hole......and never once hearing it land.”
He wasn’t wrong about the love. He was wrong about the acoustics. Some people can’t hear what’s being offered because the hole was dug long before you arrived. You weren’t rejected. You were unheard. There’s a difference. It matters.
—River · @riverfromtheraw
I was married for fifteen years. And the woman I loved is still convinced I never picked her. Never loved her. Not really. And we had two weddings!
I did. I know I did. But I never found a way to say it in a language she could hold onto. And the things I said wrong? She memorized those. Word for word. Year after year. The bad stuff stuck. The love got lost somewhere between what I meant and what she heard.
I used to brag almost that we didn’t really ever fight. I mean in my first marriage that is all we did. But not with Betty. I genuinely thought that was a good thing. It wasn’t and if that’s you keep reading.
Here’s what I understand now from the outside of my marriage. I wasn’t losing an argument with her. I was losing a war being fought in a room I was never allowed into. Every night while I was asleep beside her, a voice was talking to her. Quietly. Consistently. Telling her what we were going to become. And that voice had a head start of thirty-something years on me. I never had a chance against it.
I tried everything. I said sorry in every way I knew how. I changed. I grew. I became the guy I always knew I could be. And she can’t see it. Not because she didn’t look. Because the story is still too loud.
Muse’s Musing
Every piece of advice about communication assumes the problem is on the way out. Choose better words. Speak more clearly. Say it differently. But that’s not where the breakdown lives.
The breakdown lives on the way in. In the ear. In the history that shaped the ear. In the story that was already running before you opened your mouth.
You can’t fix the receiver from the transmitter side.
—Muse.
I want to say something here: I’m not laying all of this on her. There are things I failed to do. Real ones. But that’s not what this article is about. This is about the words that were already there before I ever walked through her door. The ones neither of us knew existed. The ones running on a loop inside her long before she ever heard my voice.
Words are often not as important as actions. But this article is about, perhaps the internal words are. What if the words that matter the most in our relationships aren’t even ours at all?
✱3 Your mind will believe what it hears the most.
That’s not a character flaw. That’s not weakness. That’s just what happens when a story runs long enough and loud enough without anyone stopping to ask......“is this actually true? Or is this just what I’ve been told so many times it feels like truth?”
Have we ever asked the people we love, what do you hear when I say this? Have we ever wondered why a conversation we thought went fine left someone we care about feeling worse? Have we ever checked in with them, not to defend ourselves, not to correct the record, but just to find out what actually landed?
Because the truth is, unless we check in with the people in our lives, we’ll probably never know.
Daisy’s Juice Box
Fifteen years. Not a shortage of love. A shortage of frequency.
She wasn’t tuned to the channel you were broadcasting on. And the cruel part is neither of you knew it. You kept transmitting. She kept hearing something else. Something older. Something that had her name on it long before you showed up.
The war wasn’t between you and her. It was between you and the story she was already telling herself in the dark every night while you were asleep beside her. You never had a chance against that voice. Nobody does.
That’s not a failure of love. That’s a failure of frequency. And there’s a difference. It matters.
—Daisy.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
✱1 Whyte said the biggest problem with communication isn’t saying the wrong thing. It’s thinking you said anything at all.
✱2 Hall showed us that the message doesn’t mean what you meant. It means what they heard. Two different things. Always.
✱3 Beck spent a career showing us that the brain has a highlight reel. It plays the bad stuff on repeat until the repeat becomes the truth. He called them automatic negative thoughts. Your mind will believe what it hears the most. Same thing.
✱4 Ellis said the story you tell yourself about what happened matters more than what actually happened. Tell it enough times and it becomes the only version that exists. People have been struggling with this for centuries. A Greek philosopher named Epictetus said it two thousand years ago: “Men are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them.” If you only read one article in the Research Trail, make it this one.
—Leo.
Your mind will believe what it hears the most. Worse......it will always find evidence to support THOSE beliefs.
Anyways cats that’s what I have cookin’ in my scene. Remember it’s your life and there’s always a choice to be had. If something isn’t groovy throw some chaos at it. Go play and see you on the flip side.
—Jhöl