The Case of Bypassing

A failure to recognize this important principle is at the heart of a common pattern of miscommunication called bypassing. Bypassing is "the miscommunication pattern which occurs when the sender (speaker, writer, and so on) and the receiver (listener, reader, and so forth) miss each other with their meanings" (Haney, 1973).

Bypassing can take either of two forms. One type of bypassing occurs when two people use different words but give them the same meaning; on the surface there's disagreement, but at the level of meaning there's agreement. The two people actually agree but assume, because they use different words (some of which may actually never be verbalized), that they disagree. Here's an example:

Pat: I'm not interested in one-night stands. I want a permanent

relationship. [Meaning: I want an exclusive dating relationship.]

Chris: I'm not ready for that. [Meaning: I'm not ready for marriage.]

The second type is more common and occurs when two people use the same words but give the words different meanings. On the surface it looks like the two people agree (simply because they're using the same words). But if you look more closely, you see that the apparent agreement masks real disagreement, as in this example:

Pat: I don't really believe in religion. [Meaning: I don't really believe in God.]

Chris: Neither do I. [Meaning: I don't really believe in organized religions.]

Here Pat and Chris assume that they agree but actually they disagree. At some later date the implications of these differences may well become crucial.

Numerous other examples could be cited. Couples who say they're "in love" may mean very different things; one person may be thinking about "a permanent and exclusive commitment," whereas the other may be referring to "a sexual involvement." "Come home early" may mean one thing to an anxious parent and quite another to a teenager.

Because of bypassing it is a mistake to assume that when two people use the same word, they mean the same thing, or that when they use different words, they mean different things. Words in themselves don't have meaning; meaning is in the people who use those words. Therefore, people can use different words but mean the same thing or use the same words but mean different things.

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