Secret Games In Relationships

“ Kind seeks kind. ” This saying describes how the choice of people with whom you usually surrounds following unconscious patterns. These are usually derived from the emotional relationship between a person and their parents, especially during childhood. Dysfunctional relationships between parents and children can damage the latter’s relationships in the future and lead to what are called “covert games”.

The concept of “covert games” has its origins in the studies of the Austrian psychologist Paul Watzlawick, who applied it in his theory of human communication. A posteriori, psychotherapist Henry V. Dicks introduced the concept of secret games in marital relationships in his work Marital Tensions .

However, it was Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Jurg Willi who popularized the term collusion or covert games in a relationship to refer to involuntary and dysfunctional behavior of one or both partners.

This type of behavior manifests itself in conflict within the marriage. Moreover, such toxic and unconscious dynamisms bring the two members of the relationship together.

According to Willi, covert behavior is a “common unconsciousness” in a relationship. In it, the conflict repeats itself over and over in a succession of distance or proximity.

The members of a relationship cannot tolerate separation, but neither can they tolerate intimacy. This leads to them feeling suffocated when they are together and having separation anxiety when they are apart.

Thus, the members of a relationship move from individuals to a hermetic entity in which their individual boundaries overlap and create toxic behaviors. So you cannot speak of an individual pathology. Instead, there is a pathology in the relationship.

Secret polarity in a relationship

In the covert dyadic dynamic, each member of a relationship manifests a polarized role. That is, each person recreates a function of the distribution of active-passive, submissive-dominant, and dependent-independent behavior. Silently, the trump cards of one member of the couple lead to inactivity in the other.

In other words, the weak member tends to have a regressive and immature attitude and the most active member represents a progressive role or a mock maturity. This is because it takes on the adult role towards the other. This puts the couple in a vicious defensive circle.

Secret games in a relationship usually stem from repressed, similar, and unhealed emotional wounds from childhood. Both members need the other for a reciprocal healing of childhood frustrations and unfulfilled desires.

Each spouse expects the other to save them from their own internal conflicts. To also free them from past fears. And to heal the existing wounds of any loving or paternal relationships that were also not satisfying.

In an effort to heal each other’s emotional wounds, they step into the same ineffective patterns and the same difficulties over and over again, all to solve their marital and individual problems. However, it leads to pain, disappointment, and mutual guilt and fear projection.

There are rebuking phrases like “ I am so because of you. “ The paradox of this marital situation is that neither partner really wants to change anything about themselves. Instead, they emphasize even more the seriousness of a particular situation.

Covert games – the way to the exit

Covert games in a relationship are pitfalls that perpetuate toxic mechanisms of guilt, blame, and insecurity. In fact, a couple is rarely further away from the exit.

So during a marital crisis, you can remain in a toxic relationship in a secretive way. You can no longer participate in this game and want to break the marriage completely.

In another case , there is also the option of going to a therapist. This should be able to guide the members of a relationship to a solution based on the emotional damage they have experienced.

However, you cannot build love until you let go of expectations and begin to recognize each other as equals.

Creating expectations that are impossible to live up to and not taking responsibility for someone’s injuries can only lead to frustration. This basically puts a couple into the kind of sickly chaos that is capable of destroying both their self-esteem.

You have to keep in mind that a couple itself is a big classroom of love in which you can learn to fall and get up. In addition, you must also learn to develop all that human potential that you have within you. However, always do this from the perspective of respect and responsibility of each partner.

Most people think that the success of a couple is staying together forever. However, the secret may be the opposite. In other words, it should only last if it’s healthy.