Why unpredictable is worse than constant

If the consequence came every time, you could learn the rule and stay inside it. That is not how it works.

It lands sometimes. Not on a schedule, and often not on the day you expected. Some weeks are good, and the good weeks are part of the machinery rather than a break from it, because they are what keeps you believing the bad weeks are the exception.

So you adapt. You watch. You get very good at reading a face across a room and adjusting before anything is said. From the outside that adaptation looks like agreement. From the inside it feels like keeping the peace. It is neither. It is what a person does when the consequences are real and the timing is not knowable.