RATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS: Subconscious Hell vs. Conscious Awakening

You drive to work with no conscious thought of driving whatsoever, since the neural-circuits that direct that action have dropped into a "subconscious" area of your brain, allowing you to employ your conscious mind in a million other forms of thought processing, while driving naturally occurs.

Much of your life is a daily sequence of repetitive habitualized behaviors that require little to any conscious thought and many psychologists claim that 90% of your entire life unfolds from subconscious habituated behaviors that require little, if any, conscious intention or deliberation.

Many subconsciously directed behaviors are healthy, tying your shoes, using a fork and knife, brushing your teeth (try brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand and become acquainted with the power of subconscious neuro-circuitry). However, other subconscious behaviors can be maladaptive and even destructive, like various behavioral and chemical addictions, anger/rage, poor eating patterns, etc.

Interactions with your spouse/partner can become subconsciously habituated over time, in which you literally become addicted to neurally hard-wired responses that continually result in chronic conflict and, like any addictive behavior, the drive to maintain the habituated response is often overwhelming (with urges and cravings), because it is continually justified by the addictive actions of the other (who is also responding from subconscious hard-wiring), which rigidly reinforces addictive interactions that are clearly eroding the quality of the relationship.

In relationships, any behavior/interaction repeated over time, no matter how delusional and destructive, drops down into the subconscious and becomes the expected reality requiring no conscious thought to become manifest behaviorally and, even though you know what will happen every time, you have relinquished responsibility to alter the outcome based on a similar relinquishment by the other. In response to the subconscious reacting of the other, you've surrendered to the addictive behavior/interaction and it becomes your mutual reality.

Hence, you have become literally addicted to the scripted dance of defiance, justifying your steps by the steps of the other and neither of you can break free of that dance because you see only the steps of the other.

Individual brains become "imprinted' by the behaviors/actions of others which subconsciously sculpts and molds their own behaviors ("mirror neurons" YouTube). Yet, neither seeks to identify and alter their own reactive responses since the justification of their reaction is projected upon the other with, "if he/she did not do that, I wouldn't have to do this..."

UNCONSCIOUS DECISION MAKING

The reason that you fail to take responsibility for your thoughts and behaviors, in moments of high-stress conflict, is that you have surrendered to automatic brain functioning, which negates the rational decision-making of the adaptive frontal lobe (just behind your forehead), resulting in impulsive scripted reactions that only make matters worse.

Afterwards, you experience a degree of guilt/remorse associated with your impulsive reactions but, because guilt is uncomfortable (it places you at fault, resulting in cognitive dissonance), you will then seek to alleviate your guilt by justifying your reactions as caused by the other, thereby, insuring that the impulsive reactions will be replayed repeatedly.

There is only one way to escape the subconscious hell of your relationship and that is by seeking a conscious awakening that overrides your subconscious hardwiring. Yet, this path cannot be mutually pursued together because the interdependent health of a union of two requires each individual accept responsibility for their own part, regardless of any acceptance by the other.

Like any addiction, the urges and cravings to return to the interactional behavior will seem overwhelming (dependent on how long the behaviors have been occurring) and relapses will be likely, but with conscious attention to YOUR behaviors only, abstinence becomes easier over time and you become habituated to more healthy adaptive responses.

Make no mistake, what you do not identify and accept responsibility for in your current relationship, that results in the destruction of that relationship, will become a factor in all future relationships.