"I am happy with him", "Is he thinking of me or does he have another person in mind?", "Will he love me as much as the first day?" ... Automatic thoughts in relationships can be the alliance to create a healthy and happy bond or the sink of continued suffering. Many times, we are not even aware of the impact of that continuous and persistent mental rumor.

As the saying goes, what you think you believe. However, in these situations, certain ideas, automatic reasoning, and even completely irrational ideas intensify a specific emotional state. If we only feed doubt within ourselves, what we will experience is fear of abandonment, fear of betrayal, and the anguish of not being loved.

This is a topic that is not talked about often. Those judgments and ideas that flow in our mental universe during a relationship are more important than we think.

Types of automatic thoughts in relationships

Have you stopped to analyze what are your most common thoughts when you are with your partner? Do they have the taste of confidence or doubt? Do you really say I miss you when your partner is not with you? Perhaps they have the rumor of complicity or the prick of the void, that there is something missing? The most striking thing about these situations is that, sometimes, we have thoughts that we do not know how to express out loud.

Jordan Turner and James McNulty, two psychologists from Florida State University, conducted a study on this in 2020. Something that could be seen in the first place is that, on average, a good part of these automatic judgments and thoughts in the relationships of partners are positive. That is to say, it is common for that mental flow to be impregnated with affection, confidence, and security.

Now, the experts made clear a detail with which many of us will agree. Those ideations and thoughts vary depending on where the relationship is. If we have been around for several years and some differences and problems have appeared, it is common for our minds to harbor ideas of less positive valence. Likewise, this study showed that there are certain situations in which certain attitudes and ideas appear automatically and not others.

We analyze it.

Types of automatic thoughts in relationships

"He must be mad at me again", "should I share him good morning Shayari today." Many times we are not fully aware of those mental dynamics that determine us in our daily lives. However, it is important to know how to detect them to mitigate their negative impact.

These are, on average, the typologies that we can find:

• Automatic thoughts of selective abstraction: they are those that pay attention only to detail and in the end, they end up contextualizing everything to that aspect. For example, a few days ago we may have had an argument with our partner. Since then, with every gesture, every word that the other says, we attribute it to that disagreement. "He does not smile at me because he is still thinking about yesterday", "he does not say goodbye with a kiss because he is still angry."

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• The mark of low self-esteem and irrational ideas. There is another inescapable factor that often fuels automatic negative thoughts. People with low self-concept and weak self-esteem tend to feel many doubts during their relationship: they fear being abandoned, not liking the other person, losing their affection ... All of this ignites the engines of the factory of worry and irrational ideas.

• Negative experiences accumulated over time. One fact that the authors of this study could demonstrate is that. oftentimes, the couple goes through potholes and disagreements that are not always resolved well. In the end, that emotional evaluation of negative valence arising from specific events ends up permeating everything in a general way. And it does so through those negative thoughts that repeatedly fuel discomfort.

What can we do in these situations?

Mental rumination leads us to a situation similar to someone who ends up sinking in quicksand. The more intense this production of unhelpful thoughts, the more trapped we feel. In this way, what automatic thoughts in couple relationships do is make us have less control over our emotions, feeding states of anxiety and distance from the loved one.

Letting yourself be guided by that kind of mental rumination is like living on an automatic pilot. We have no control over ourselves. If we want to build a happy and enriching emotional bond, it is essential that we pay attention to ruminant thoughts. Now in what way?

• We must avoid that automatic tendency to relate one thing to another. Also to make spontaneous interpretations. If there is something that worries or worries us about the relationship, it is better to talk about it with our partner before reaching our own conclusions. 
• Many of our automatic thoughts are based on our own emotional and psychological states that are not dealt with or managed. Low self-esteem, insecurity, or fear of abandonment are the perfect fuel for this ruminant ideation.
• Our thinking is full of traps, irrational beliefs, and distorted schemes. Introspecting and detecting many of those mental knots that veto happiness is another strategy.

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Finally, there is only one important point to note. It is not easy to achieve conscious control over every event in our mental universe. Something like that takes time. Clinical approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy are the best resources in these cases. Let's not hesitate to ask for expert help if we need it.