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It's easy to think a good marriage means never arguing. The truth is, my wife and I had arguments almost every week for years, and they were infuriatingly predictable. 

The setting was always the same: Wednesday evening. I'd come home late, tired but energized from my squash game. I’d be thinking about a shower and dinner, but the minute I walked through the door, my wife would casually mention the sink was overflowing with last night's dishes, or that the living room had been left a mess. I would immediately feel a heavy weight, and I'd shut down, muttering something about how I was "too tired" from my training, or how she was "always nagging me." My reply would cause her to immediately escalate, accusing me of being selfish and prioritizing my sport over our time together.

The arguments always ended the same way. I would react to her anger by withdrawing my attention completely—my way of punishing her for the confrontation, and any remaining connection would vanish.

This vicious cycle of friction always led to a devastating climax. The moment that truly broke me was when she looked at me during one of these arguments, her eyes full of helplessness and blame, and said, “I am unhappy, and it’s because you never follow through on anything important to me, especially giving me your time.”

I felt the full, crushing weight of that blame. My immediate reaction was still anger, but beneath that was a terrifying realization: we were repeating the same argument, following the same script, and feeling the same negative payoff every single time. We weren't communicating; we were following a hidden pattern.

(A quick note on authenticity: While some details are altered to protect privacy, this account captures the core emotional truth and destructive dynamic that defined our relationship.)

Crucially, we didn't stop this pattern in time. The constant arguments, the escalating resentment, and the unconscious Games were too destructive. Ultimately, this predictable, unresolved cycle led to our divorce.

That painful experience happened more than twenty years ago.That divorce was my wake-up call. It was this loss that led me on a search for answers, the desperate need to understand why we kept playing this losing game until the very end. That search led me directly to Transactional Analysis (TA), the work of Eric Berne, and the shocking realization that we were deeply entrenched in what he called a Psychological Game.

This is the price of unconscious Games. But it’s also why I now know exactly how to help you stop them.