(5 minute read)
The Mad Hatter is a walking contradiction in a world where Alice keeps trying to apply ordinary sense to nonsense.
And perhaps that gives us a useful way of looking at something that can happen in difficult or narcissistic relationships.
The Search for Coherence
Most of us assume that if we have enough information, think carefully enough, explain ourselves clearly enough, or revisit an interaction one more time, eventually the contradiction will resolve.
There will be an explanation.
Things will make sense.
But imagine a relationship in which:
What was true yesterday isn’t true today.
A rule applies to you but not to them.
What they said isn’t what they meant.
What they meant isn’t what you heard.
Something definitely happened — but apparently it didn’t.
You respond to what they said, only to discover that somehow you’ve responded to the wrong thing.
So you explain yourself more clearly.
You ask another question.
You go back over what happened.
You try to understand their point of view.
You look for the bit you’ve missed.
And instead of clarity producing resolution, the conversation produces another contradiction.
That’s Mad Hatter territory.
“I Don’t Understand It Yet”
There is an important assumption hidden inside our confusion.
We assume that coherence exists and we simply haven’t found it yet.
So instead of thinking:
“This doesn’t make sense.”
we think:
“I don’t understand it yet.”
Those are two very different positions.
“I don’t understand it yet” recruits further effort.
It sends us back into the conversation looking for the missing piece.
If I ask differently…
If I explain myself better…
If I listen more carefully…
If I remember exactly what was said…
If I can just work out what they meant…
Then surely it will make sense.
But what if the problem isn’t that you haven’t found the coherence?
What if the interaction itself isn’t coherent?
When the Rules Keep Changing
Human beings learn by building models of the world.
We notice patterns.
We learn what things mean.
We predict what is likely to happen next.
And when our prediction is wrong, we usually do something extremely sensible:
We update our understanding and try again.
Most of the time, that’s adaptive.
But what happens when the rules themselves keep changing?
You update your understanding.
The rule changes.
You update again.
Another contradiction appears.
You try another explanation.
The meaning shifts.
And because you are assuming that there must be a stable explanation somewhere, every failed attempt can make you try harder to understand.
You are applying a perfectly reasonable human ability — learning from error — to a system that may not remain stable long enough to be learned.
In Wonderland, you can update your model all day.
The rules can simply change again.
Confusion Is Information
This gives us another possibility.
Perhaps confusion is not always evidence that we have failed to understand something.
Sometimes:
Confusion may be information about the interaction itself.
If you repeatedly leave conversations trying to reconstruct what happened…
If explanations create more questions rather than fewer…
If yesterday’s understanding repeatedly fails to predict today’s reality…
If greater clarity from you repeatedly produces no greater clarity in the interaction…
then perhaps the question is no longer:
“What am I failing to understand?”
Perhaps it becomes:
“Is there actually a stable explanation here for me to find?”
That is a very different question.
The Mad Hatter Problem
The problem with the Mad Hatter isn’t simply that he doesn’t make sense.
It’s that Alice keeps trying to make sense with him.
She brings ordinary expectations of language, logic and conversation into a world where those expectations repeatedly fail.
And that may be the more useful psychological question for us.
Not simply:
“Why is this person contradictory?”
But:
“Why do I keep assuming that if I work hard enough, I will eventually make the contradiction coherent?”
Because the search for coherence can become its own trap.
More thinking.
More explaining.
More remembering.
More checking.
More attempts to find the missing piece.
And every unsuccessful attempt can leave us believing that perhaps we simply haven’t tried the right explanation yet.
Stepping Out of Wonderland
There comes a point when we may need to stop asking:
“How do I make sense of this?”
and ask instead:
“What happens if I stop requiring this to make sense?”
That doesn’t mean abandoning reason.
Quite the opposite.
It means allowing repeated contradiction to become part of the evidence.
The fact that you cannot construct a stable explanation may itself tell you something important.
Sometimes confusion isn’t evidence that you haven’t understood the relationship yet.
It may be information about the relationship itself.
And perhaps grown-up Alice or Alex gets to learn something the little one couldn’t:
You don’t always have to understand Wonderland. Sometimes you’re allowed to notice that it makes no sense and stop trying to make it make sense.