Is “The Blaming Reflex” a Lapse of Mental Health?

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Too quick to blame

Source: Toa Heftiba on Stocksnap

“We make jailers of people and prisons of circumstances.”

Aren’t we all a bit too quick to fault others and our circumstances for our frustrations, upsets, and disappointments? Blaming seems to come naturally, rolling off our tongue as though it had been well-rehearsed. Sadder, aren’t those we love the most frequent targets of our blaming?

I confess, in my less stellar moments, I blame my partner, and more often than I’d like to admit, especially in a public forum like this. Partly in self-consolation, but also as a common observation, don’t most of us play the blame game by succumbing to what’s arguably a reflex-like evasion of personal responsibility? And to what end? Doesn’t usually blaming back us into a defensive, counter-productive, even relationship damaging cul-de-sac?

“Kitchen sinking”

Making matters worse, blaming often reignites a litany of unresolved squabbles—a phenomenon noted marriage researcher, John Gottman, refers to as “kitchen sinking.” Here, previous partner disputes that were insufficiently laid to rest with a “proper burial” of resolution, get thrown into the “sink” where they are rehashed, or regurgitated in uglier, newer incarnations that perpetuate our emotional mayhem rather than settle it.

By Definition

Blaming is a reactive and accusatory salvo launched by a frustrated partner at the partner doing the frustrating. Blaming, and its sidekicks, labeling and name-calling, are often merely emotional reflexes that burst out of us without much, if any, conscious thought.

Moreover, blaming is subject to reification; meaning, we start to believe the labels we attach to our partners, and as a result, we desensitize ourselves, or we are “blinded” on those occasions when our partners are not playing the role we’ve assigned to them; we expect what’s not actually there.

Understandably, that can seem to hang ever-present and threateningly over the intimate relationship and lay a quick groundwork for the “instinctive” use of blaming. Surely, we’d expect the occasions for blaming our partners to roughly equal to those instances of interpersonal friction triggered by our individual differences. These personal differences provide an unending and fecund spawning ground for partner frustration and its notorious bedfellows, blaming, labeling and accusing.

Adding to the mix, we know our intimate partners inside and out; therefore, we’re well-positioned to serve up unerring, stinging appraisals of each other.

However, even under circumstances where objective onlookers would agree with us that our partners are indeed serving of our blame, how does it benefit me or my partner when either or both of us resort to blaming each other? And don’t we owe it to ourselves, and our partners, to untether ourselves of the negative impact of our partner’s “blameworthy” mistakes, errors of judgment, and sundry missteps, instead of applying another layer of adversity by our use of blame, critical labels and accusations?

What’s in your toolbelt?

Is blaming a part of your “problem-solving” repertoire, your toolbelt for traversing what is convincingly the most frustrating relationship? If so, how does it usually run its course? Ironically, in the wake of blaming your partner, do you then turn the blame on yourself for having blamed your partner? In these guilt-filled moments, do you vow to never repeat your relationship sins but too often you do anyway?

Blaming is not easily overcome—but in a perfect world, wouldn’t it be given the status of “black sheep,” a pariah to be banished because of its knack for seeding and cultivating partner acrimony and conflict?

A “power outage”

Isn’t the act of blaming an unthinking divestiture of our personal power, or the control we ideally ought to retain over our own moment-to-moment emotional health and well-being? Instead, by blaming, we unwittingly invest it in our partner, and so we become the hapless victim of their presumed blameworthiness. More simply, blaming our partner implies that if only they had done this rather than that, we’d be happy—as though it were our partner who acts alone in determining our immediate emotional welfare. Isn’t this poor mental health?

To blame or not to blame

Upon closer examination, isn’t it easier to blame my partner than take on the potentially arduous task of managing my needs more effectively? Also, what do the criticisms I so readily hurl at my partner reveal about me, particularly my personal needs and how well I manage them?

For example, let’s suppose I accuse my partner of being controlling. Logically, is there a controller without someone to control? Is there a teacher without a student, a doctor without a patient, and so on? Hence, my accusation is valid only when I’m occupying the role of control. By this reasoning, I cannot accuse my partner of controlling me without simultaneously incriminating myself, which, in this case, means I’m in the role of controlee.

Most importantly, why am I playing the passive role of control? Am I avoiding risk? Am I not willing to stick my neck out because I anticipate negative consequences of some kind? But what then are the long-term consequences of the poor management of my needs, of not risking?

Relevant questions

What do I think would happen if I were to step out of the role of controlee and actively manage my needs? And if I were to do this, would blaming my partner be necessary?

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