Unspoken Rules: The Forces That Silently Guide Our Relationships
We all live by unspoken rules. Silent influences that quietly shape how we think, feel, and relate. You might notice them in the moments you stay quiet when you want to speak, overextend yourself to avoid conflict, or feel responsible for everyone else’s mood.
These rules show up everywhere: in close relationships where you tiptoe around tension, in family patterns that seem to repeat across generations, or at work when you take on too much because saying no feels unsafe.
These are not random habits but echoes of emotional decisions made long ago. In psychotherapy, these deep patterns are known as our Life Script, an unconscious emotional blueprint formed in early childhood and played out through adult life.
How These Rules Play Out in Everyday Life
In romantic relationships
You might notice yourself minimising your needs because you fear being seen as demanding. Perhaps you apologise too quickly after conflict or never apologise out of fear that you will lose power or status. You may hold back your true feelings to keep the peace or find yourself drawn to partners who replay familiar emotional dynamics from childhood, such as a partner who withdraws when you need closeness, or one you feel you must care for to feel secure.
Sometimes you sense the pattern even as it unfolds: the same arguments, the same emotional distance, the same longing to be understood. It can feel like something deeper is steering the interaction, scripting your reactions before you can think them through. The rules that once kept you safe now quietly limit how close you dare to be. The earlier these decisions were made, the deeper they sit within our personalities. This is why our reactions to familiar emotional conflict can feel so visceral.
In family life
Family can be the strongest mirror for our script. You may find yourself slipping back into childhood roles at family gatherings: the fixer, the reliable one, the quiet one, the black sheep. Old dynamics resurface even when you intend to behave differently. A parent’s sigh, a sibling’s tone, or a familiar silence can transport you back to an earlier version of yourself. You might feel guilt for setting boundaries or shame for not meeting expectations, even as an adult. These responses often happen automatically, a bodily remembering of old relational rules that still live beneath the surface.
In friendships
Unspoken rules shape how we show up with friends too. You might be the dependable listener who rarely shares your own struggles, or the peacemaker who avoids honest disagreement. Perhaps you find yourself drawn to friends who need rescuing, or feel uneasy when a friend grows distant or independent. The script can whisper rules like “Do not be a burden” or “Keep things light”, leaving intimacy feeling risky or one-sided. When friendship feels imbalanced, part of the work is recognising how these early emotional blueprints still define what feels emotionally safe and what feels emotionally dangerous.
In the workplace
Work is another place to see our scripts at play. You might feel driven to achieve and prove your worth, anxious about making mistakes, or unable to delegate because you fear letting others down. Some people take on more than their fair share, staying late to avoid disapproval or neglecting rest because their rule says, “I must be useful to belong.” Others struggle with authority, replaying early relationships with parents or teachers. Even feedback can feel personal, as if it confirms an old fear of being inadequate.
In teams and leadership, scripts often collide. One person’s “I must do everything perfectly” may meet another’s “I’m not trusted by others”, creating tension that feels deeply personal. an echo of earlier relational templates being unconsciously rehearsed and repeated. Wherever we go, our script goes with us until we start to see it for what it is: an old map, drawn for a different time.
Where the Rules Came From
From a young age, we try to make sense of a world that can feel confusing and unpredictable. In that process, we draw conclusions about ourselves, others, and life itself. These early conclusions are not logical in the adult sense; they are the child’s best attempt to stay safe, loved, and connected.
Freud observed that human beings have a powerful tendency to repeat rather than to resolve what hurts them. He called this the repetition compulsion, an unconscious drive to recreate early experiences of love, loss, or conflict in the hope of mastering them somehow. We are drawn to the familiar, even when it causes pain, because it feels emotionally predictable.
Building on this, Eric Berne, the founder of Transactional Analysis psychotherapy, introduced the idea of the Life Script, an unconscious life plan formed in childhood and reinforced throughout adulthood. These scripts are sustained by the very repetitions Freud described. The familiarity of the script brings a sense of safety, even when it keeps us stuck.
Berne also described psychological games, repetitive relational patterns that follow hidden rules and lead to predictable emotional outcomes. These games are the adult expressions of early survival strategies, offering the illusion of control while keeping the underlying script intact.
Someone who grew up feeling unseen may keep choosing partners who overlook them. Another who learned to earn affection through compliance may repeat relationships where they suppress their needs. The repetition offers a strange kind of safety; it feels known. It also carries the unconscious hope of a different ending. Yet each time that hope is thwarted, the original belief system is reinforced.
Over time, these choices harden into unspoken rules that feel like truth:
I must not need too much.
If I am perfect, I will be loved.
It is safer not to speak up.
My needs come last
We carry these rules into every context, our relationships, families, friendships, and workplaces, often without realising we are still obeying them.
Pausing The Replay
Freud’s idea of repetition compulsion helps explain why we return to painful situations with such intensity. Familiarity brings emotional predictability, a sense of knowing how the story will unfold. Even when it hurts, the known can feel safer than the uncertainty of change.
The Life Script provides the rulebook for these repeated games. When we find ourselves reliving the same conflicts, arguments, or disappointments, we are often re-enacting the original story we internalised as children. Recognising these patterns allows us to pause the replay, to stop performing an old role and begin authoring a new ending.
Why Change Feels Hard
When we try to act differently, to set a boundary, to rest, to ask for help, it can feel like pushing against an invisible force. That force is the script itself, whispering, “This is not safe.” Because our scripts were formed to protect us, challenging them can stir anxiety, guilt, or shame. The work of therapy is not to erase these rules but to understand where they came from, appreciate how they once kept us safe, and gently experiment with new ways of being.
The Unthought Known
Bringing elements of our script into conscious awareness can be a painful process. Psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas offered a powerful way of understanding this through his idea of the unthought known, those emotional truths that live within us but have never been symbolised in words. They are known in our body and emotions, but unthought until they find expression through language.
When a client begins to name an element of their Life Script for the first time, perhaps realising “I learned to hide sadness to stay loved”, something shifts. It can feel as if an emotional truth, long carried in silence, finally finds its voice. There is often grief, relief, and recognition. This process of giving words to what was once wordless is one of the most transformative parts of therapy. It moves the script from being lived out unconsciously to being thought about consciously.
Final Thoughts
Understanding our Life Script is not about self-blame or analysis for its own sake. It is about compassionately tracing the lines of our history to understand why we feel, choose, and relate the way we do in the present. The rules we follow were written to protect us, but they can also keep us from growing.
Therapy offers a space to look beneath the surface, to recognise the patterns that once kept us safe, to mourn what we lost along the way, and to begin writing new, more life-giving rules. With awareness, the familiar no longer has to dictate the future. We can learn to choose connection over protection, truth over repetition, and presence over performance.
I offer individual and couples therapy, supporting clients to explore emotional patterns, relationship dynamics, and the deeper roots of feeling stuck or disconnected.
I am a qualified psychotherapeutic counsellor, trained in Transactional Analysis at the Metanoia Institute, and a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). My approach is collaborative and grounded in curiosity, and straight-talking where needed to support meaningful change.
References
Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy. New York: Grove Press.
Berne, E (1964) Games People Play. The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis. New York: Grove Press
Bollas, C. (1987). The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. London: Free Association Books.
Erskine, R. G. (1980). Script Cure: Behavioral, Intrapsychic and Physiological. Transactional Analysis Journal, 10(2), 102–106.
Freud, S. (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Standard Edition, Vol. 18. London: Hogarth Press, 1955.
Karpman, S. (1971). Options. Transactional Analysis Journal, 1(1), 79–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/036215377100100115
Karpman, S. Script Drama Analysis, Transactional Analysis Bullitin 7:26, April 1968