The Ego is often referred to by psychodynamic therapists and its origins are with Freud.
Deepak Chopra an Indian-American author and alternative medicine advocate, describes the Ego as our false self.
The Ego is also described by the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle as the mind, that we’re not our mind, so it interferes with us being in the moment and enjoying life by swamping us with thinking. Instead of admiring a wonderful sunset and being present in that moment, the ego needs feeding, so while you are doing this, swamps you with overthinking and worrying about the next day’s work you have. The next day isn’t there, but the Ego makes it figural, and the joy of the sunset gets buried under the worry of the project you have to finish tomorrow.
We can assume the Ego isn’t us and has its own agenda. The Ego feeds itself with charged emotions, so it can feel superior, and you might notice you are very judging of people, it can attack us, so you might notice how you put yourself down, it might create lots of drama, and you notice yourself being unhappy and blaming someone else, or it needs praise, so you might notice you are a people pleaser.
The Ego and egoic thinking also gets involved in your relationship. If your partner is late, if they have forgotten something, or if they are moody and depressed, you as a person would try and understand why this has happened and perhaps calmly talk about it. But the Ego sees a chance to create the negative emotions it needs to feed on, so will instantly jump in with an attack, and in turn, your partner’s Ego will need to defend itself and attack back. You could both be angry, say hurtful things, even throw objects, which when you calm down (the Ego has done its job and feels full and satisfied, so now goes into a rest period) you then regret what you have done and said, and at times may not believe you could behave that way. This type of egoic behaviour destroys relationships.
To understand the Ego and how it tricks you into feeling unhappy, aggrieved, angry or anxious, Eckhart Tolle’s book, The New Earth is a great way to understand this, and make changes so it stops controlling you and wrecking your relationship.