Psychological Games Shape Your Relationships More Than You Realize

Written by: Āndrew Boyton

Sometimes we say something we immediately wish we could take back. The words land harder than intended. The room changes. And in the quiet that follows, we are left with one uncomfortable question: why did I do that?

The world is good at telling us what we did. It is far less interested in what we were trying to do.

In a recent episode of Married at First Sight Australia, a participant named Brook returned to a dinner party and said things that were mocking, hurtful and distressing to others in the room. The programme's experts called it out. Words like bullying were used. Brook later issued a public apology, describing it as her worst version of herself.

Something important was missing from the experts' response, though. They spent time on what Brook had done. They spent almost none on what she had been trying to do.

That distinction matters. When we only ask what someone did, we stay at the surface. Beneath almost every outburst, every sharp word, every moment of apparent cruelty, something else is at work. A need unmet. A truth unspoken. A pressure held too long.

Brook's own words pointed to this. She spoke of feeling tired of being the nice girl, of carrying unspoken frustration, of feeling unheard. What erupted at that dinner table was not gratuitous. It was a release, imperfectly handled, of something real.

THE GAME BEING PLAYED

Eric Berne saw this clearly. In his 1964 book Games People Play, the Canadian psychiatrist described what he called psychological games: recurring patterns of behaviour that follow a hidden script and leave everyone involved feeling worse. Games are not played consciously. Nobody wakes up deciding to perform one. They run beneath the surface, driven by unmet needs for recognition, attention and connection.

Berne mapped how games unfold through what he called Formula G: a hook draws someone in, a gimmick makes them accept the invitation, the exchange escalates, there is a moment of confusion as roles shift, and then the payoff arrives. That payoff is never what it appears. It is not triumph or justice. It is a momentary relief. The brief release of pressure had no other way out.

Two of Berne's named games are visible in Brook's evening. Uproar: an escalating confrontation fuelled by buried resentment that ends in noise and withdrawal rather than resolution. And See What You Made Me Do: the attribution of one's own loss of control to the behaviour of others. Both games protect the player from having to say, simply and directly, what they actually need.

Berne's colleague Stephen Karpman gave this dynamic a shape: the Drama Triangle. Three roles, endlessly shifting. The Persecutor who attacks. The Victim who absorbs. The Rescuer who steps in. What makes the triangle so useful is that no one stays in the same corner. Brook began the evening as Persecutor. By the time the experts weighed in, she had moved to Victim, wounded by the very reactions her behaviour had provoked.

In 1987, the clinical psychologist Petruska Clarkson added a fourth role: the Bystander. The Bystander sees the game clearly and does not intervene. Clarkson was precise about what this means. Bystanding is not neutral. By watching without acting, the Bystander quietly permits things to continue. Silence, she argued, is its own kind of participation.

The dinner party was full of Bystanders. Most guests watched and stayed still. Stella and Alissa, directly in Brook's line of attack, showed something shrewder still: they refused the game's invitation. They did not rise as Persecutors in return. They did not collapse into Victim. They held their ground at the edge of the triangle. That restraint, conscious or not, was a refusal to play.

The experts occupy Clarkson's fourth role, too, with formal authority. They watched, named the behaviour and called for accountability. Her framework asks something harder of them: at what point does thoughtful observation become part of the structure that allows these games to keep running?

Berne's most quietly radical move was not naming the games. It was the question he invited people to ask themselves afterwards. Not: am I playing a game? That is too easy to dismiss. The more honest question is: what game am I playing? The shift from whether to what is the distance between defensiveness and genuine self-inquiry.

A HELPFUL INSIGHT

Reframing is not the same as excusing. An explanation is more useful than a verdict, because explanations make growth possible.

When we understand that Brook was trying to stop performing a version of herself she no longer believed in, we do not erase the hurt caused to Stella and Alissa. But we see a whole person, not just a moment of failure. Someone whose intentions, buried beneath poor delivery and an unwise amount of champagne, were not without dignity.

This is what genuine change requires. Not shame alone. The clarity to separate who we are from how we behaved, and to find a better way of saying the things that actually matter.

The partner who raises their voice is usually trying to be heard. The colleague who sends the sharp email is trying to hold a boundary they cannot yet name. The friend who goes quiet is managing something that feels too large. When we learn to ask what game is being played, we stop responding to the surface and start responding to the person.

The question is not: am I playing a game? That is too easy to dismiss. The question Eric Berne invites us to ask is: what game am I playing? A small shift in language. An enormous shift in honesty.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. In a recent moment of conflict, what game was being played? What need was it trying, clumsily, to meet?

2. Can you name a recurring pattern in your relationships: a version of Uproar, or See What You Made Me Do? What does it protect you from having to say directly?

3. When you have watched a game unfold without intervening, what held you back? Was that restraint protective, or in Clarkson's sense, a quiet permission for things to continue?

CLOSING THOUGHT

We all do the best we can with the emotional vocabulary we have. For most of us, that vocabulary has gaps. Feelings we were never taught to name. Needs we were never shown how to express. Truths held so long in silence that when they finally came out, they frightened even ourselves.

The invitation is not to excuse any of this. It is to understand it. Because underneath almost every moment that causes harm, there is someone trying, however clumsily, to be honest.

That is a starting point worth something.

If this piece has opened a door, the following books offer a way in.

Games People Play | Eric Berne (1964)

The original. Accessible, often wry, and still remarkably relevant. Berne catalogues the games we run in relationships, marriages and workplaces with precision and the occasional dark humour.

I'm OK, You're OK | Thomas A Harris (1967)

Harris took Berne's framework to a mass audience. A warm, readable primer on the three ego states and why we get stuck in patterns that no longer serve us.

TA Today | Ian Stewart and Vann Joines (1987)

The standard introductory textbook. Thorough, well-structured and widely used in counselling training. An excellent reference for anyone wanting to go deeper.

Scripts People Live | Claude Steiner (1974)

Steiner extends Berne's ideas into the concept of life scripts: the unconscious narratives we write in childhood and spend years enacting. Quietly revelatory.

The Bystander | Petruska Clarkson (1996)

Clarkson's full exploration of the role she added to the Drama Triangle: what it means to watch, what it costs to stay silent, and why intervention is always a choice.