The autopilot brain makes preconscious, automatic judgments and behavior choices, predicting the future based primarily on past perceptions and experience. Most behavior is directed by implicit judgments, conditioned responses, and habits.

Implicit judgments automatically dominate emotional demeanor—body language, muscle tone, facial expressions, and tone of voice. If you regard your partner as selfish, that regard will be apparent in your body even if you never express it verbally.

In the autopilot brain, everyone is mostly selfish. We’re hypersensitive to partners acting selfishly but hardly aware when we are. There are notable exceptions, but unintended selfish behavior by both partners is the rule.

Please understand that insensitivity to our own selfishness is not hypocritical. It owes to normal brain functioning, which, on autopilot, is simply more sensitive to other people’s selfish behavior than our own. The brain records injury we suffer over injury we inflict.

If you think your partner is selfish, your partner........

© Psychology Today