The Subconscious Circularity of Predictable Puppets

There is seldom a straight line of blame/judgement in the chronic conflict of intimate relationships, although the need to indict a guilty party is omnipresent on both sides.

Unconscious patterns evolve over time between intimate partners. You see him/her and he/she sees you, but can you see both? Can you see the whole or only the parts that proclaim your innocence by pronouncing the other guilty? You see what he/she did, but your alienated state denies understanding how you have provoked it.

You think you see the cause, but subconscious patterns interconnect with other subconscious patterns until cause and effect are completely obscured in a growing tapestry of emotional resentments, born through years of unresolved transgressions leaving residual wounds that fester over time.

His insensitivity that day, you remember in today's conflict. But his insensitivity was caused by your 'justified' judgment from his lack of remorse, which he then perceived as a dismissal demanding his criticism, which provoked your blame, evoking feelings of childhood abuse in him which facilitated his thoughtless response, thereby, determining the words you said that cut deep into his psyche and that he will refuse to forget. Like the chicken or the egg, which came first, his violation or yours?

The circularity of subconscious patterns in long-term relationships, in which you see only the responses of the other, is hidden within the everyday undercurrents of a fading unity and a growing alienation, insidiously eroding bonds of love through the reactive responses generated by unacknowledged subconscious emotional wounds.

The ego-self, or that which you identify as "I-me," can become a warehouse of stored resentments that often refuses to lighten the load by discarding emotional antiques and relics, which it uses to define itself. Over time the stress of maintaining this warehouse of past relics not only results in failed relationships, but even full-blown symptoms of mental illness, not to mention physiological conditions resulting from chronic emotional stress.

The moment he/she hurt you, you immediately made a mental note to increase protection against future assault and, although he/she knew not why, he/she clearly felt your withdrawal and erected protective walls of their own. Brick by brick we hunker down for protection from those we love the most and often our protective measures are instigated by demons of the past that they know nothing of (even you are not sure ‘why’ you felt that way and reacted as you did).

Violations of childhood can be subconsciously ignited in adult lives, when all the variables somehow click effortlessly into place, resulting in knee-jerk reactions that, although not consciously intended, cannot be taken back once initiated. This often results in back-pedaling to avoid the heavy weight of guilt because, although you know your reaction was wrong, you quickly review the mental log book of his/her past violations to justify your reaction and alleviate your guilt.

Intimacy between lovers is not measured by sexual frequency, but by deep and fully engaged mutual understanding. Do you think you know him/her? If I say I have an “intimacy” with American history, I am proclaiming a deep understanding of that which makes up American history. I know it fully and deeply. Yet, intimacy between partners is often measured by frequency of sex, while outside the bedroom disrespect is abundantly rampant.

When intimacy recedes (deep understanding), preemptive predictions of what the other thinks and feels arise in the frontal lobe and you no longer relate to him/her, but to your interpretation of him/her, which rarely represents the truth, but merely symbolizes your warehouse of resentments that become more distorted and skewed through the progress of time. Nevertheless, through your distorted predictions of what he/she thinks and feels, you will prepare battle plans with absolutely NO desire for understanding the truth of the other or yourself.

Understanding is no longer necessary and fully and deeply listening is abruptly canceled, since you have become expertly adept in prediction and know exactly what he/she will say, do and even think. You have conceptualized and defined the nature of his/her very existence (in relation to you) and no further knowledge/understanding is necessary. Now your predictions of who and what he/she is will completely determine what you say and do as you make preparations for what your concept of he/she will undoubtedly say and do, based simply on how you have assumed he/she will perform.

And like a puppet it will dance on its strings exactly as expected because, like a puppet, you dance on yours. Neural hard-wiring insures adherence to the same old habitual script and the performance rarely ever changes. Your interactions with each other are neurally hard-wired and any real change will demand you shock the brain out of its habitually scripted, knee-jerk, interactive patterns. Otherwise, the desire to remain in the "comfort-zone" of chronic conflict and competition becomes the only means of relating.

Pulling each other's strings, predictable puppets become locked into a performance that both habitually provoke, but neither feel they can exit, that is, until one cuts the strings. Unfortunately, this often occurs as one proclaims a desire to exit the performance completely by ending the relationship.