How to Turn Off Relationship Autopilot

One of the things people come to talk therapy for help with is repeating negative patterns in their relationships. Often a client will describe a fight with a partner that is emblematic of the issues they want to change about themselves. They’ll describe the fight, and after a few sessions and some self-reflection, they will start to develop a better understanding of what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. However, that doesn’t mean they are suddenly able to change. The patterns they’re describing have been going on their entire lives, and that’s something to consider when we talk about trying to change them. It’s like trying to turn an ocean liner: It starts small, takes time, and happens gradually. The first stage of this change is an awareness of the patterns we want to change, but initially this awareness is frustrating because we can’t act on it. We might feel like we know what we want to change but some part of ourselves refuses to listen and we’re powerless to stop it. It’s like we’re on relationship autopilot.

It might play out something like this: You have a fight with your partner, and you fall into your pattern. You react a certain way, they react a certain way, the typical dynamic kicks in, the same feelings emerge, and the night is ruined. But as this is happening, part of you is recognizing exactly what’s going on, and wants to avoid it. This part of you is like a captain trying to steer a cruise ship away from an iceberg but unable to change course. This part of you is helpless, and watches as the fight plays out in its predictable pattern, resulting in the predictable conflict and resulting unhappiness.

This phase can be super frustrating. It’s like you’re watching yourself do something you know you don’t want to do but you still do it. It's like a horror movie, where you’re yelling at the actor to not go into that creepy old house, because it will only end badly, but they still go into that creepy old house and, of course, it ends badly. Only later on, after the blow up, is the captain able to regain control of the ship, and only then are you capable of approaching your partner and apologizing. You might even explain that you knew what you were doing and that you didn’t want to be doing it but that you felt powerless to stop doing it.

As you work through this process—both the actual fights and the therapy sessions talking about the fights—your captain will start to get more control of the ship. Soon you might be able to actually stop at some point during the next fight as the pattern is playing out and state that you don’t want to act like this, that you don’t want this pattern to continue (even as it does). In a peaceful moment at a different time, you might be able to explain to your partner what you are doing in your fights and why you’re doing it, acknowledging that you know it’s making you both unhappy and that you just don’t know how to stop it. An awareness of the destructive patterns that make our relationships unhappy is a huge step along the road to change, but it’s a frustrating one because we can finally see that the person responsible for our unhappiness is ourselves. We should be the one person who we have the most control over, yet we often find it so hard to make ourselves change.

Eventually the captain starts to regain control earlier and earlier in the pattern. Where at first they could only right the ship after the fight was over, they begin to be able to do so earlier in the process. The fights get shorter and shorter as the resolution moves up little by little. The end goal is to find yourself in the same situation, with the same issues and the same conflict and the same patterns about to be followed, but this time you are able to choose to act differently. The trigger that kicks in our defensive emotions and starts the process we are trying to change suddenly doesn’t work. We find ourselves in full control of the ship, realizing that usually we would react a certain way, but finally feeling like we have the option not to. Instead, we might verbalize exactly what’s happening, acknowledging that we would usually react a certain way but this time we are not. And we might also get positive feedback from our partner—appreciation for the change we have worked so hard to achieve. Relationship autopilot is finally disabled, but for all the trouble it caused there was one thing about autopilot that was good: We didn’t have to do anything. Now we find ourselves in a much more active role, having to work hard at doing the things we need to do to have less conflict and more connection in our relationship. The cruise control is off, meaning we have to keep our eyes on the road and our hands on the wheel, and even though this takes more effort, it leads to a closer and more satisfying relationship.