Much of the suffering in relationships is caused by miscasting others and others miscasting us.

We miscast another when we expect them to play a role that they are not suited for or are unwilling to play. And if someone is unwilling to play a role, it means they are unsuited for it unless and until they are willing and very likely they will never be willing to play the role we want them to. We can't supply another person's will, so if we coerce them into playing an unwilling role, we take away their will and make them an exploited puppet.

We all have images of the roles we want someone to play for us—mentor, lover, friend, reliable partner, confessor, companion, helper, and so forth. We want the other to make us feel better, but like us, they are probably seeking to regulate their own feelings and can't make ours their top priority without sacrificing their own legitimate interests.

Most of us have unmet needs and desires and will, therefore, cast whoever is available into roles that we imagine would fill those needs and satisfy those desires.

People can rarely play the idealized roles we cast them to play. Just as the map is not the territory, a role is not a person. People are much more complex, varied, and dynamic than the roles we might want them to play with perfect reliability.

Much suffering could be avoided if we let people cast themselves into the roles they choose rather than the ones we choose for them. Also, we must be aware that people miscast themselves and try to play roles they can't or won't live up to. The role someone plays in our life is the sum total of all their thoughts, feelings, and resultant actions toward us and other spheres of their life that affect us. And in any rich relationship, that sum total is far too complex and varied to fit neatly into one idealized role.

Much of the conflict in relationships results from miscasting from one or both parties. Sometimes, we can't help to miscast others because we have such a strong need or desire for someone to play a certain role. Here's a classic example.

I'll use the first-person pronoun "I" since I don't know if you've ever been in such a situation, and I like to write first-person fiction. The "I" is not meant to refer specifically to me, Jonathan, the author of the card, but to anyone in such a classic miscasting situation.

I have a loving friendship with someone I'm attracted to, but whose Eros is incompatible with mine. I currently lack anyone in the lover/romantic partner role in my life, so I miscast this attractive friend as a potential romantic lover. Such a miscasting is "tragic magic." If I cast the desirable person as a platonic friend, a role they can play, I could have a loving friendship that could be stronger than the tension of one-sided attraction. If, instead, I cast them into a role they can't play, I create a bitter disappointment for both of us. I will feel they are betraying the role I want them to play, and they will more legitimately feel betrayed by my miscasting them into a role they never volunteered for.

Now, let's consider a more complex but classic variation of the above. Intellectually, I realize this desirable friend is not available for the role I want them to play. I also know, intellectually, that they have no more choice about who they are attracted to than I do, so to expect otherwise is fundamentally unfair. What I know intellectually, however, does not change what I feel, and I may continue to long for the impossible since they are desirable and I have no one else fulfilling the role I desire someone to play.

In this case, the miscasting is not total but infused with self-awareness of this subtler version of miscasting. This situation is not as untenable as the first one. There will be tension, but potentially a creative and developmental tension between an emotional tendency to miscast and a consciousness of the other's actual role. This is case will require work and involve sacrifice and a willingness to endure discomfort at times.

I may restrain fantasizing about them as a lover, while continuing to be emotionally oversensitive to their actions, jealous, possessive, etc. Some might abandon such a situation as intrinsically flawed, but if you aren't willing to deal with problematic aspects in a relationship, you will likely have a lonely life, as all complex relationships have problematic aspects. Ideally, I would work on the problem with the friend, bringing the issue into mutual consciousness while taking primary responsibility for being the source of the subtle miscasting. I will work on restraining a tendency to expect too much from them and recognize that jealousy of anyone they are attracted to is not anyone's fault but something that might have to be endured for the sake of the friendship. If the discomfort is too great for a healthy relationship, I should not blame the other or myself unless I willfully continued to miscast them when I had enough consciousness to recognize the unfairness of that.

Miscasting can happen with any relationship. I have a parent who does not play the role of idealized father or mother. Perhaps they have also miscast themselves to be a better father or mother than they actually are. This can lead to permanent estrangement or conscious efforts to recast the parent as the complex and varied person they actually are and accept what love they can offer.

Similarly, a child may bitterly disappoint the parent who cast the child in their own image or as who they wanted an ideal son or daughter to be. The parent needs to recast them as who they are, accept some ambivalence, and seek to love the actuality rather than the unsuitable role they wanted the child to play.

To love someone means to love the actuality of who they are and to restrain, as much as we can, the universal tendency for our needs and desires to miscast them.