Collusive Games In Love Relationships

It is often said that “ every pot has its lid” in the world of relationships. However, using this saying as a guide to finding a partner is to follow unconscious patterns, resulting from the affective relationship one has with parents in childhood. Thus, dysfunctional relationships between parents and children could harm people’s relationships in the future, leading to so-called collusive games.

In its origin, the concept of collusion is found in the studies of the Austrian psychologist Paul Watzlawick, who applied it in his Theory of Human Communication. Later, the psychotherapist Henry Dicks, in his work on Matrimonial Tensions , introduced the concept of collusion in marital relations.

However, it was the Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Jurg Willi who popularized the term collusion or collusive games to refer to involuntary and dysfunctional behaviors between members of a relationship.

Such behaviors are manifested in marital conflicts. Furthermore, these toxic and unconscious dynamisms are intrinsically linked to the members of the relationship.

According to Willi, the collusive behavior forms a “common unconscious” in the couple relationship, in which the conflict is constantly repeated in a succession of distance or proximity.

Couples cannot stand separation, let alone intimacy. This makes them feel asphyxiated in close proximity, and that they start to suffer from distance when they go away.

The couple goes from an “individual me” to an “hermetic we” in which individual boundaries overlap. Thus, one can no longer speak of an individual pathology, but of a relationship pathology.

Collusive polarity in the couple

In collusive diactic dynamics, each member of the relationship plays a polarized role. That is, each member of the relationship recreates a behavior division function of activity/passivity, submission/domination, dependence/independence. Unconsciously, the activity of one member of the relationship causes inactivity in the other.

The weak member tends to be regressive and immature, while the more active member plays a progressive role or false maturity. This is because he is forced to act in the adult role in relation to the other. When they collide with each other, the couple enters a defensive vicious circle.

Collusive play in relationship often arises from repressed or unhealed childhood emotional wounds. Both need each other for mutual healing of childhood frustrations and unfulfilled desires.

Each spouse hopes that the other will save them from their own inner conflict and release them from past fears; healing from the existing wounds of all romantic or parental relationships that were not satisfactory.

In an attempt to heal their own emotional wounds, each member of the relationship returns to the same ineffective patterns and the same difficulties in solving their marital and individual problems, causing pain, disillusionment and projecting their own fears and guilt onto the other.

In this scenario, phrases such as “I am like this because you…”, etc. are common . The paradox of this marital situation is that none of the members of the relationship really want to change anything about themselves, making the situation even more serious.

Exit door of collusive games

Collusive games are a trap that maintain toxic mechanisms of guilt, repression and insecurities, and rarely does one of the parties realize where the exit door is.

Thus, during a marital crisis, one can remain in an unhealthy relationship collusively, or not participate in such games anymore and break the relationship.

In other cases, there is also the possibility of looking for a specialized psychologist to guide the members of the relationship towards a solution due to the strain suffered.

However, love can only be built when the members of the couple let go of expectations and begin to recognize the other as an equal.

Creating expectations that are impossible to achieve and not being responsible for one’s wounds causes frustration and introduces an unhealthy chaos into the relationship capable of destroying each spouse’s self-esteem.

It must be borne in mind that a couple is the master class of love in which one can learn to fall and rise. It is also possible to learn to develop all the human potential that is within, always with respect and responsibility for each one.

There is a belief that the success of the relationship lies in “lasting a long time”. However, the secret could be quite another: to last “until you are healthy”.