Marriage & Couple Conflict Resolution:

Therapist: I have two questions that I’d like to ask both of you. First, what can you do to make this relationship better? And second, what stops you from doing it?

Harmony: Shall I go first? I suppose I could lower my expectations and accept I am never going to be satisfied. And what stops me, hmm, I don’t know, some lingering sense of dignity or self-respect.

This is a real quote. I asked that question, and a real woman sat in my office and said those words about her real husband sitting next to her. I open with it because it highlights just how profound and deep-rooted this mindset can be. For many couples escaping the pantomime of blame, viewing conflict outside the Punch and Judy show of me versus you is the first yet often the most difficult step. Indeed, the phrase “it’s not me, it’s you” runs like a stick of rock through many disharmonious marriages and relationships.

Some experts believe the whole process of couple therapy is a process of exploring and developing healthy answers to the two questions posed above, namely, “What can I do to make this relationship better?” and “What stops me?” Yet deciding blame, differentiating between behaviour and reaction is one of the most complicated processes outlined in this book and potentially one of the most destructive. It can underpin dynamics that go from low-level squabbling to full-on abusive relationships, with both parties entrenched in their positions and unshakeable in their beliefs.

To an extent, we are all experts in what our partner is doing wrong, but this pattern is more: it is characterised by a profound belief that all relationship dysfunction is entirely due to the behaviour of one person. There may be some lip-service given to looking within themselves or quick reflection on areas in which they can change, but under the surface there is a cast-iron resolve, an absolute conviction that it is all the other person’s fault.Typically, this dynamic involves one who blames and one who is blamed, however occasionally it may involve both parties adamant it is all the other's fault. Both blaming each other, both unable or unwilling to see the other person’s side.

The Blame Game

Yet blame can be a complicated phenomenon and what separates the blamed from those that blame can be difficult to distinguish from that which connects. For even in cases in which there is clear and one-sided failings in behaviour, many of these qualities and characteristics would have been evident in the early stages of the relationship. 

This raises the questions as to why were these qualities tolerated before and not now? Or, an even more troubling question, is whether such qualities were not the source of antagonism but the source of attraction?

In the context of relationships, blame can serve a number of functions. Perhaps you pick someone chaotic, someone who needs looking after to distract you from the pain and failings within yourself. Or you pick someone who needs you because you calculate that someone who needs you is less likely to leave you. From the other side, perhaps you grew up being criticised and diminished and now in some way you equate this with a loving relationship and thus pick a partner that will replicate that dynamic.

I’ve started to realise I always picked the guys with issues, the guys who struggled to pay their bills, the artistic types. Then I’d complain I’d have to look after them. I never really thought about it, but now it’s just so clear, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.

It is often easy to try to dismiss such deeper motivations and interweaving drives and pretend you were dazzled at the start, or blinded by love, and the whole thing was an awful error of judgement. The truth is far more messier and the difference between what we want and what we need far more murkier.

Breaking the Blame Cycle

Often, once couples simply accept there is more to this than fault and blame, and start looking at this behaviour beyond the narrow prism of me versus you, it can help shift the pattern. Like many dysfunctional routines, the pattern maintains the pattern. Blame blocks connection which encourages blames which blocks connection. Awareness allows both parties to step out of the hamster wheel and act rather than just react, to be able to see the message beyond the blame, the deep desire for connection that is shielded behind the attack.

I admit it, I was angry. I look back...I struggle to explain it, I was an absolute pig to live with. I don’t know why he put up with it. It was just a chaotic period in my life.

The challenge is that blaming behaviour can come from both sides. There may be a strong sense of shame around the issue of dispute which may block discussion. They may have had to defend themselves previously, and part of their defence mechanisms is to attack. There may be a history of deflecting or refusing to accept responsibility and of blaming the other.

Knowledge is power, and awareness of what is going on allows us to take control instead of being controlled. Indeed, many couples start to feel a tremendous rush of relief, finally escaping from the roles of symbolic parent and child or attacker and defender or victim and persecutor which they may have inhabited for many years.

Yet awareness needs to be combined with action to achieve sustained results. This step requires identification and dismantling of the subtle mechanisms of control and criticism, of rebellion and disempowerment that maintain and perpetuate this dynamic. For example, see how you blame when you come back from work, or if something doesn’t go right, or after you talk to your mother.

I was just so frustrated, but I started to see how me complaining all the time was making it worse. Once I eased up, he started to compromise, then I started to compromise. I was micro-managing and then getting frustrated that I needed to micro-manage! I can now see it was what my mother did to me father, and I guess I was just following her lead.

You need to work out specifically what you are doing and how you play your blame game. Then stop it. Of course, that’s easier said than done, but equally nothing changes if nothing changes.

 

This is an edited extract from 15 Reasons Why It’s Not Working: A Pattern Based Approach to Resolving Conflict.

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