Having just talked about how to remain yourself in a group that pressures you towards conformity, a next level appears, directly connected to relational life: how do you read the true intentions of those around you correctly? Not out of functional paranoia, not to become suspicious of everyone, but to navigate relationships with greater clarity and to make decisions based on reality rather than projections or hopes.

People's intentions are rarely explicitly declared. And even when they are, the declaration doesn't always match reality. Not necessarily out of ill will, but because people don't always know their own intentions clearly, or because they are afraid to voice them directly. The capacity to read the real intention behind behaviour is one of the most refined forms of relational intelligence and is built through attention, not through suspicion.

Why words are not enough

Human communication is layered. There is what someone says, there is how they say it, and there is what they do. And when these three levels are not aligned, the most reliable information is almost always in the behaviour, not in the words.

Albert Mehrabian, a psychologist at UCLA, formulated in his early research an idea that has often been oversimplified, but which contains a real kernel of truth: the verbal component of communication, meaning the words themselves, contributes surprisingly little to the total message conveyed in emotional interactions. Tone of voice, facial expression, posture, the pace of speech and concrete behaviour transmit far more about a person's inner state and real intentions than the explicit content of their words.

This doesn't mean we should ignore words. It means we need to read them in context, not in isolation.

Consistency as the primary indicator

The most reliable indicator of real intention is not an isolated gesture, not a phrase uttered at a particular moment, but consistency over time. People can control what they say. They can phrase things beautifully, make convincing promises, appear present and caring in a specific interaction. But the consistency of behaviour across time is far harder to simulate.

If someone tells you they care about you but consistently disappears during the periods when you need their presence, the consistency of the behaviour contradicts the declaration. If someone says they respect your limits but systematically tests them, the consistency shows more than the words. If someone promises and repeatedly fails to honour those promises, the pattern is information, not an exception.

I have come to give far more weight to repeated patterns than to isolated moments, regardless of direction. A single beautiful gesture doesn't define a person. Consistent behaviour does.

The details that speak

There is a category of signals that attentive people value and that less attentive people tend to ignore: small, apparently insignificant details that appear at the margins of main interactions.

How does someone speak about other people when those people are not present? If a friend or partner speaks with consistent contempt about former partners, about friends who disappointed them, about colleagues, this is information about how they process relationships and about what they might eventually say about you.

How does someone react when things don't go their way? The inevitable frustrations of life reveal character more authentically than any moment when everything is going well. How does someone handle a situation in which they are disappointed, in which they don't get what they want, in which they are contradicted? That reaction is far more revealing than surface behaviour during good times.

What does someone do with discretion? Do they respect information shared with them in confidence, or do they distribute it, even in the form of apparently harmless "details"? Discretion is a strong indicator of respect for the other person and of emotional maturity.

How does someone behave with people who can offer them nothing, with the waiter, the taxi driver, the person at reception? This dimension, trivialised in discussions about character, is in reality extremely revealing. How you treat people towards whom you have no social or image-related obligation shows who you are without a mask.

Projection as an obstacle to reading intentions

One of the most frequent obstacles to correctly decoding intentions is projection. We project onto others the intentions we ourselves would have in similar situations, or conversely, the intentions we fear most.

If you are a person of good intentions and genuine in relationships, you will tend to attribute similar intentions to others, even when their behaviour indicates otherwise. If you have been repeatedly hurt, you will tend to read threat where perhaps none exists. Both are distortions that interfere with clear perception of reality.

Distinguishing between what you concretely observe and what you interpret is a practice I always recommend. "They said X" is an observation. "They meant Y" is already an interpretation. The more you stay at the level of observation and the less you allow yourself to fill gaps with assumptions, the more accurately you read reality.

Questions that clarify

When signals are contradictory or when you sense a dissonance between what someone says and what they do, the most direct path is to ask. Not accusatorially, not defensively, but with genuine and calm curiosity: "I noticed X, and I'm wondering what you meant by that." Or: "I'm sensing a difference between what you tell me and what you do and I'd like to understand."

These questions don't guarantee a sincere answer. But the way someone responds to them, including evasion, defensiveness, or conversely, openness, is itself valuable information.

When to trust your intuition

There is a level of reading intentions that moves beyond rational analysis and into the territory of intuition. Intuition is not magic. It is the subconscious processing of a large volume of signals that the conscious mind has not explicitly catalogued. The feeling that "something doesn't fit," without being able to put your finger on exactly what, is often the result of subtle discrepancies you have observed without having consciously formulated them.

I believe intuition deserves to be taken seriously, especially when it is consistent and cannot be explained by an old fear or an obvious projection. Not as certainty, but as an invitation to look more carefully.

Decoding the intentions of those around you is not an exercise in cynicism. It is an act of respect for reality and for yourself. It allows clearer relationships, better decisions and, ultimately, fewer disappointments produced by your own illusions about others.

Think of a person in your life towards whom you sense a dissonance between what they say and what they do. What concrete patterns have you observed? And if you set aside hope or fear and looked only at the behaviour, what would that tell you about their real intentions?