When we form emotional bonds with others, we also form dynamic internal images of them. In other words, the people we love star in movie scenes that we continually play inside our heads.
Our internal movie scenes give us a persistent sense of the significant people in our lives when they are absent. The 14 month-old child who closes her eyes and vividly imagines her absent mother avoids the pangs of separation anxiety; mother still exists in her imagination and is likely to return in reality. Internal movies give us a sense of continuity and security. They help us explain and predict what is happening in our relationships.
By the time we're adults, our internal movies allow us to interact with the most important people in our lives, in our imaginations. We routinely think of what we will say to loved ones (as well as what we should have said and done) and imagine what we will do or might do with them. We also imagine how they will respond to what we say or do.
We tend to imagine loved ones responding only in certain ways and definitely not in others. If you are able to imagine your partner sympathizing with you for having had a bad day, you probably cannot imagine him or her bursting into mocking laughter if you report that you are tired or depressed.
Unfortunately, our internal movie scenes determine real-life interactions more than they are influenced by them.
Internal Movies are Emotional, Not Factual, and Destined to Turn Negative
The characterizations of our internal movies are continually revised by our emotions and hardly at all the facts of experience. The brain does not rely on facts in forming internal movies about loved ones because our connections to them are predominantly emotional and only peripherally factual. To test this hypothesis, close your eyes and think of a loved one and see what leaps to mind - an emotionally charged image or a fact.
In the beginning of relationships the stars of our internal movies tend to be heroes and heroines, thoughtful, considerate, loving and entirely lovable. Of course it rarely stays that way, due not to your lover or your childhood, but to the negative bias of emotions.
Emotional experiences come with a built-in negative bias. Negative emotions enjoy enhanced and priority processing in the brain due to their immediate survival significance - it is more important in the short run to respond to the snake in the grass than to admire the beauty of the lawn. Due to negative bias, the movies in your head will, over time, include fewer comedies and love stories than sagas of disappointment and betrayal.
The movies in our head are likely to grow negative because they help explain negative experience. The inability to understand negative emotions is anxiety-provoking, if not overwhelming. We would rather have a bad explanation of what is happening than no explanation at all. I would rather think that I feel bad because I'm a loser or my partner is selfish or unreasonable than have no idea why I feel bad. When it comes to pain, the human brain craves explanation and predictability more than truth.
When we look to blame our bad feelings on someone else, we almost always choose the people closest to us. Over time, consistent blaming reframes the problems of ordinary living as problems in the character of our partners. The characters of our internal movies are always more important than the plots.
Here are typical examples of negative internal movies that develop in marriage.
Her movie: He's "a selfish, passive-aggressive, irresponsible, destructive, lazy, abusive, bulldozing, spoiled brat-crybaby, who craves pity." She, of course, plays a victim, who, in her mind, alternates between placating and self-righteous rebellion.
His movie: She's "controlling, unreasonable, and rejecting; you can't talk to her about anything without her being verbally demeaning and abusive; you just have to stay away from her." He, of course, plays the counter-victim, who, in his mind, valiantly tries to keep matters from exploding by avoiding her when she's irritable or unhappy.
This is a movie whose sequel you definitely don't want to see.
Part II of this post will show how internal movies control perceptions of reality to make or break relationships.
