“Why am I unhappy in my relationship? They are so awful to live with!”
Author: Shawn Kispert
Blaming Others in Relationships
It has occurred to me more than once this month, blaming seems to be a special key to the destruction of relationships, particularly working with addiction.
It is parallel with the addict, reliant, dependent person.
If I blame another, do I have any responsibility?
They made me, they did this, they pushed for this, they won’t let me, they won’t stop.
The key in this argument is, unless you are being physically restrained, this argument holds no water.
Taking Your Power Back
You have choices. You always have choices. You can choose to blame others and continue in this cycle. Or you can choose the way to freedom of blaming. I call this internal vs external work. When you blame others, you are doing external work. You are outwardly blaming others for your situation.
When you do internal work, you internalize any situation and reflect on how you have contributed to it.
What am I doing in this dance? How am I contributing? What boundaries have I made unclear or what boundaries have I crossed? Have I been accountable? Have I been reliable?
I’m sorry to say, usually not. Here is an example:
“She doesn’t listen to me, I don’t love her she’s so rigid. I don’t want to be with her anymore, I want someone fun and lighthearted.”
I would say: Tell me more.
At which time said person gives me a laundry list of complaints.
My question always is: What is the problem? Are you keeping secrets? Which could be other inappropriate relationships…your real feelings, your authentic desire of the current relationship or other things, including money, vacation desires. sexual desires, employment change desires etc.
After that flushes out, which takes a while, because blaming has been so prevalent the client rarely even KNOWS what they want.
Changing Your Mentality
What have been the consequences of you not being internally honest with yourself, and then externally honest with your partner? This creates an interesting dynamic shifting current blame externally to the spouse and requiring the client to internally consider their part in the issue and make some changes.
I am absolutely convinced if you do the work to change yourself, you won’t really be concerned with what other people are doing. Only then can you decide if you need to make a change.