Category Family

April 7, 2017,  Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

How and Why Games Began

It seems that Tamara and Alex’s game began when had their first child. However, in truth, the root of the issues presenting themselves has a longer history and it starts with Alex’s early life.

As often happens, when the first child is being born, the father can feel replaced and ignored. This certainly happened to Alex. But added to the background of his relationship with Tamara, or the lack of it, was his relationship with his father and the feeling of rejection he experienced then that consequently escalated now.

Back then, when he was a child, he wasn’t aware consciously of the missing figure of his father because he had everything he wanted.

The gulf between Tamara and Alex grew even wider when Alex went to work for the science and technology company whe...

March 22, 2017,  Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

Tamara and Alex’s Games

Things need to be clear in order to be understood. By clear I mean the background story and the connection to the current issues to it need to be understood to fully comprehend what the current issues are about before responding.

Usually issues come up when something far distant in the past which has nothing to do with current issue impacts on the resolution and/or even the understanding. Consequently, what you might think about a situation will often be the exact opposite of what I think about it.

Understanding and being clear about each other’s past helps build the future of the relationship better and can prevent issues from occurring.

Each relationship has its stages and it’s important to recognize the stage and its needs.

In fact, to be in a happy relati...

March 16, 2017,  Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

Beth and Roger’s Games – What Obstructed Their Relationship Progress?

There are few things that obstructed Beth and Roger‘s relationship. Surely the first thing to mention is the miscommunications between them. Having in mind their childhood experiences and the way they have developed certain patterns in their way of relating to each other, it is obvious that their effective communication skills are limited.

By “skills” I mean the ability to say what you really want to say and to give yourself time to understand what the other person is saying.

I also mean the ability to listen not in order to answer, but in order to understand.

It also means being honest with each other in those communications.

Situations like this and the resulting crisis in the relationship are most often a sig...

March 1, 2017,  Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

Beth and Roger’s Games

The story of Beth and Roger may look superficial or like nothing is really happening and affecting their relationship, but if the situation is analysed and looked at more closely, a lot of underwater details appear and give some clues to something happening at a subconscious level not evident when looking at it consciously.

The problem occurs when one of their children doesn’t want to attend the other child’s birthday party. Beth gets upset and expects Roger to take care of her feelings and to console her, but he is unable to do it.

Questions immediately appear and some of them are: what is so distressing about this situation and why so and even more so what roles are both playing and why?

The truth is, as bystanders to the situation it seems that Beth and R...

January 11, 2017,  Exercise, Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

Life Is Not a TV Drama

Is it possible to live a drama free life? Is it necessary to have drama in our lives in order to feel balanced when it is over? Isn’t it easier to just exclude even the smallest possibility of turning a fly into an elephant? What make us create dramas in our lives when this is the thing we fear and dislike the most?

Look at the games the couples in our stories (The Story of Tamara and Alex, The Story of Vanessa and Mark, Vanessa and Mark (cont), Detecting Games in Relationships, Responding Assertively to Game Playing).

An Exercise

If you want you can challenge yourself: try imagining each game discussed as initiated by anyone, of either sex, and imagine how that game story might play out...

February 12, 2016,  Family, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

The Story of Lyn and James

“Lyn” and “James” have been married for ten years and have three children. When they first met, Lyn had just left school. James was fifteen years older and had already been in the workforce for some time.

At the time they met Lyn still lived at home, while James had his own place. Lyn looked up to James for support and guidance and he was able to be that at a time when Lyn was still new to adult relationships and adulthood generally.

Lyn was still somewhat naïve, so she allowed James to advise her in exactly how she was to act as his wife and even what she should be like as a person.

Then things changed.

Lyn grew up and started to have opinions of her own. But whenever she attempted to express them they had a disagreement...

January 25, 2016,  Family, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

Here are some little known facts about the games we play with our partners in relationship:

• Games are not played only between people in a romantic relationship. They can also be played between family members, between work colleagues, between friends and even between “teams” of people.
• You need two to tango. All players have to be willing to play otherwise there will be no game. And while playing, each participant can and do make conclusions about the game which may have nothing to do with the payoff of the game itself.
• Games can be played out of fear.
• Some people are just scared to let other people get close to them simply because they fear the possibility of the other person leaving and the pain of missing them.
• Some games can be played out in a minute, though the ultimate script ...

January 6, 2016,  Family, Relationship  No comments

Your memory stores all kinds of information from your life’s experiences. We make sense of those events, attach them to other events as we deem appropriate and store them, no matter how trivial they might seem, somewhere for future reference as needed.

You might surprise yourself by how much trivia you seem to have stored that just pops up, seemingly from nowhere, from time to time while at other times we just can’t seem to access some basic stuff that we really need at that moment, like where did you leave your keys or wallet.

Within our subconscious minds different layers keep information with different levels of importance, age, intensity and impact. Each kept unconsciously within us and differently from the others.

It is amazing that actually everything you have ever experienced ev...

December 17, 2015,  Family, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

All Psychological Games get played from one of three positions. These can be seen in action on the Survivor’s Triangle.

I call it the “Survivor’s Triangle,” because, while games are destructive, you play them in response to whatever you were taught, or decided, as a child. It was the way you learned to survive in your family and in society.

As well when you are a child you ‘by default’ need to be taken care of, to be helped and pampered because you are a tiny and weak creature. You simply need to survive as a child biologically and later on emotionally so you naturally do whatever you need to ensure that happens.

Survival or Imprisonment?

Each of the triangle’s corners represents one of the three stances that someone might take in a game...

November 4, 2015,  Family, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

One thing is certain – human relationships are a complicated maze that has no entry or exit signs. It’s as if we start a relationship with our eyes closed, groping our way to the entrance of the maze but without a clear vision. We have no map or knowledge of how long it will take us to reach the point of “living happily ever after”.

There are some couples that accept the challenges, but there are also those who prefer to play it “safe”, or even leave when it starts to get hard just to end up in the same place in their next relationship. This becomes a way of avoiding the difficult situations or solving the serious problems that have become part of their relationships and indeed which are part of all relationships.

Eric Berne, who first developed game theory, defines games as “…an ongoin...