Can you know someone better than they know themselves?

My girlfriend knows me better than I know myself, so, yes.

I tread very carefully around sentiments like that. I think someone can see things about ourselves that we don’t see, yes, but I find it hard to believe that people know the deepest longings of our hearts. Others can only see our behaviours and the feelings that we express, and even those can be misinterpreted.

It irritated me as a younger person when people projected their issues/fears/bits of themselves they were trying to disown onto me and claimed that what they were projecting were examples of “how they knew me better than I knew myself,” when it was complete bullshit.

I think this is true. Someone can see things about a person that they don’t see. I could see that my high school boyfriend put on a macho-bravado persona to cover his sensitive inner feelings, and for protection from being hurt. I think he even believed it himself.

Yes…very much so. Telling them this is a whole can of worms though.

I think in some instance, knowing someone better than they know themselves is possible but what does it really mean to ‘know oneself’ anyway?

I think it’s possible in cerain situations, but I’m not so sure you can completely know someone better than they know themselves. Personally, I’ve had people share insights about me that I had not recognized before they said something. When I thought about it, it turned out that they were right. I’ve done the same for others a few times.

@aprilsimnel puts it best for me.
There is absolutely no way a person can know another better than they know themselves. Anyone who thinks they do are most definitely projecting in my opinion.

Sure. Especially if the person in question is in denial about certain issues. lol

I have a friend that I have recently just woken up to some serious passive aggressive manipulations on her behalf.

I see it very clearly but she is clueless, so, nowhere to go from there. haha

As @coloma said, the reason someone close to you can know you better than you know yourself is definitely the denial issue.

I agree with @aprilsimnel that this is dangerous territory. I have known a few people, including a couple of clinical psychologists, who see themselves as very good readers of people, and what I’ve noticed in them is an over-readiness to conclude that they’ve got someone figured out. They then proceed to interact with that person based on their theories about what makes them tick. But imposing that template on the other sets up a dynamic which will tend to bring to the surface those very characteristics.

One of my psychologist friends has concluded that someone who works under us is emotionally unstable, disrespectful of authority, prone to brooding…basically a 45-year-old who’s a rebellious teenager at heart. But I see him as extremely bright and competent, eager to cooperate and contribute for the success of the enterprise. Thing is, he’s actually both of those people. When my psychologist friend is dealing with him, he treats him the way a stern parent deals with a mouthy adolescent, and sure enough this elicits that kind of behavior in the guy (which of course reinforces my friends opinion that his reading was correct). But when I deal with him, I treat him like a respected adult who’s contributions I value and lo and behold, there’s that smart, competent colleague.

In our interpersonal relations, people often become what we expect them to be because we lead them there with our own behaviors, as the famous Stanford Prison experiment demonstrated. This can give us an inflated sense of our ability to know others.

I would sit on the fence here and say yes and no.

You’ll never know somebody better than they know themselves because you won’t know all the things that motivate them; all the fears, hopes, dreams, embarassments, tutors and situations that have shaped them.

That being said, you may be better at predicting their behavior than they are. You may guess what they will do or say in a situation better than they will because very often we intentionally blind ourselves to elements of our personality that are glaringly obvious to others.

In the sense that my husband knows how I will react to most things, especially if I am angered by something. He knows me enough to say I know you very well. I don’t know that he’s ever said, “better than you know yourself.” He just knows that I work backwards on things. I have to let it out to think clearly. Then I look at him and say, “but you knew all of this, right?” He just shakes his head and walks away.

I know me, better than he does. He just understands me, very well – at that!

I think that noone can ever truly know you better than you know yourself. There is always something inside us that is unique, strange and misunderstood. Everytime we want time for ourselves to contemplate on our own. This is the part that is unknown. The thoughts we have when we are on our own.

If they’re not very self-aware, then yes.

@Facade

Exactly!

Some people are good at hiding their true feelings.They’re better actors than the average person. Others try to hide their feelings but have the kind of face that expresses emotion so plainly that they have nowhere to hide, nowhere to run to! And some people like to be open and aren’t so careful to hide their feelings.
So there are conscious choices being made about how much they want to divulge of their inner life. Then there are differences in how self-aware they are of their feelings and motivations and the meanings of their actions as Facade mentioned. An insightful person who is good at picking up non-verbal clues, and who watches and observes patterns of behavior can pick up on something that the other person is trying to block out from others or from themselves. As others have mentioned above denial and repression as well as other defense mechanisms interfere with self awareness.
When we feel confused and need to sort out our feelings, don’t we always go to someone who knows us well, but can be more objective than we can be about ourselves? But when we are not looking for the advice and it comes to us, we often resent and reject it. It’s only natural. We may not want to face the thing that is so readily apparent to others. Still, they see only outward signs without truly experiencing our inner reality. Am I contradicting myself? As usual, Wundayatta /you have asked a supposedly simple question that is actualy quite complex! And here I am tying myself up in knots trying to answer it, lol.

Bottom line:
Others can observe us and have insights, and conjectures about what our behavior means, but ultimately we are the one experiencing it and only we can know what that feels like. We cam’t avoid having others attribute meanings to our actions and guessing at or psychoanalyzing our motivations. In some cases they may be right about certain things. But to me, “knowing” involves more than putting a meaning to something. It involves the inner experience of your your own unique self, and defined as such, I would have to say, no, no one can know ourselves better than we do. One caveat, as far as mental illness goes I am no expert, but knowing your self and understanding, knowing and being objective about your behavior are two different things.
I hope I wasn’t too confusing with this answer, damn, I feel tired now

I think a lot of really romantic, love-sick young people, who are also very inexperienced with the opposite sex love to say “He/She knows me better than I know myself.” I don’t believe it for a second, but it sounds so romantic to think that there is a soul mate who knows you better than you know yourself. It’s actually kind of creepy to think that someone else is in your head and you don’t know yourself very well. The young love-sick puppies often become what their boyfriend/girlfriend tells them they are. So therefore it appears as if the other person knows them better.

I think you can predict a lot of behaviors in your friends and relatives (usually negative patterns) that the friends and relatives don’t want to admit are patterns. So once again, it appears as though you know these people better than themselves, when in reality, they know full well how they are, they just don’t want to admit it.

Each one of us has stuff deep down inside that is only ours to know. No one else can ever know you better than you know your own self, especially when some of that knowledge is horrifying to our own selves.

You can predict their thoughts and movements to an extent but that has to do with the nature of man.. as to the man himself, you can’t predict exactly who they are.. In most cases they dont even know themselves.