[ad_1]
Do you ever find yourself ready to smash your man, but then think halfway through: wait, why am I even mad? Yeah, it’s definitely embarrassing and makes you rush to save face.
Although you feel like you have good reason to vent, blaming your partner is never healthy for your relationship.
Sometimes it’s hard to take responsibility for our own actions, but that doesn’t stop us from blaming others. Yet we do.
Here are 7 unfair reasons why you blame him for everything, and what to do instead. It’s easy.
Under stress, it’s often easier to see what someone else is doing wrong than what you’re doing wrong. It’s easier to see food stuck in your partner’s teeth than your own.
To see yours, you must first locate a mirror and then look into it. And then you would need to open your lips to be able to see your own teeth. And weren’t even talking about finding the motivation to locate and look in the mirror, let alone expose the ugly state of your teeth to yourself.
2. It’s fun.
Well, OK, maybe not fun. But it feels good on some level.
At worst, blaming someone else feels good in a vengeful way, I get it. More often than not, there’s a venting and energy release part that’s somewhat satisfying. But there’s another part that doesn’t feel so good, in an uncontrollable, guilty way.
However, even the bad part of this feeling can be more comfortable than it should be. For example, how righteous would you feel at that moment if you really took responsibility for the part of the conflict that belonged to you? Because there is almost always a part that belongs to you.
To truly take responsibility, you may have to fight through a wall of shame. Right now it would be painful to really acknowledge that you did something wrong, that you were bad, messed up, thoughtless, or whatever.
3. Accepting responsibility and feeling bad is hard.
What makes accepting responsibility particularly difficult is shame, which most of us feel to varying degrees (psychopaths are an exception). It’s the feeling that fundamentally we weren’t good enough as human beings, that we were flawed, inadequate, broken, flawed…need I say more?
So if we start to come to terms with the idea that maybe we did something a little wrong, for some that can tap into that big pool of I’m all bad. And it’s just awful!
Since the function of shame in society is to act as a sanction against the violation of important social norms, it leaves a quiet feeling. At worst, you may feel totally isolated in your wickedness, cut off from any possibility of love from anyone else, for eternity.
Wow, no wonder it’s better to blame your partner! But wait, there’s more…
4. We have learned all our lives to blame.
From an early age, we were taught good and evil and especially evil.
First by our parents, then by our teachers through the long school years into adulthood. The good and the bad behavior, the good and the bad answers, the good and the bad everything. It highlighted and underscored those feelings of shame for the most meaningful and tender formative years of our lives (not to mention adulthood).
We also learned that if you can successfully deny it or blame it on someone else, you don’t have to feel so ashamed. I didn’t do it, Gertrude did!
5. We use ourselves as the standard.
We all tend to think My way is best. Sure! We’ve spent our entire lives improving on (or working against) what our parents taught us, so this has to be the way to do it! Maybe the only way to do it! If only you did it my way!
Well, it turns out there are many ways to do things, and in many cases either it doesn’t really matter, different conditions may require different ways, or at least it doesn’t probably not worth losing your relationship.
But letting go of ideas, beliefs, or ways of doing things can be scary. You may feel like something terrible is about to happen or you might get lost.
6. It’s hard to fully accept that your partner is a different person.
Things would apparently be a lot easier and smoother if your partner thought and did things the way you do. But your partner is a different person, with their own ideas, personality, and habits.
On some level we were aware of this, but too often if our partners do something different from what we would do, we feel angry and frustrated. And we reinforce our anger with all sorts of justifications and rationalizations. But my way is really better. Not really. And sometimes it is.
But how often is it worth sacrificing your relationship to be right or wanting your partner to respond the same way you are?
Accepting these differences can be painful, can make you feel separate from them, and can scare you that you and your partner might be too different after all. But it can also bring you closer in the long run if you can talk and learn to accept each other’s differences.
7. His animal nature to bite back.
When we feel criticized or blamed, it is natural to criticize or blame back. It is an extension of our protective reflex to attack sources of physical threat or pain. So it makes perfect sense that when we are hurt emotionally, we try to hurt ourselves back in an effort to relieve our own pain.
This instinct can be one of the most powerful forces behind blame, especially the kind of retaliatory reflexive blame that gets us stuck in miserable fights that escalate. Our best intentions can be a small match against mother nature’s hard-wiring.
But again, we can become more self-aware, learn the signals that precede blame, and do something else instead.
None of these reasons is sufficient.
Think of a time when you felt blamed or criticized. Remember how it felt inside? Think of a time when you were arguing with your partner. Chances are at least some of what you felt was blame, criticism, hurt, and anger.
Now think about how you felt the next day or maybe a few days later (assuming you’ve recovered somewhat from that fight). Remember how much more clearly you could think about topics and how much broader your perspective was? Remember how you could think more about your partner’s point of view in a more open way? Maybe you were even able to find a solution with your partner in this quieter place.
If it doesn’t, or if it’s even hard to get to a quieter, clearer place after about a day, then maybe the pain you’re causing yourself is becoming chronic and that would be the right one. time to seek advice.
Related stories from YourTango:
When we feel blamed, criticized, or misunderstood, feelings of hurt and anger flood our minds and bodies, making it almost impossible to have a decent conversation. Not only are we unable to think clearly, but it becomes much more difficult to really listen to our partners.
Also, since it’s natural to fight back in an effort to get pain relief, we fight back, inducing all those same bad feelings we have in our partner. So now we’re both not only weakened, but caught in an unpleasant cycle with each other that only gets worse.
Knowing how much it hurts to feel blamed or criticized, and knowing how much it paralyzes the conversation and the relationship, wouldn’t it seem useful to learn how to retrain these reflexes?
Here are two alternatives to consider next time:
Identify and name your vulnerable emotions: Anger and frustration are usually the easiest to name and are better named than acted out. But these are not the most vulnerable feelings. See if you can locate some sadness (loss) and/or fear and talk about it.
Push yourself to have compassion for your partner: is he having a bad day? What other stresses affect them? What vulnerabilities do they have or protect? Is it a pattern that adapted for them in their childhood, in the face of painful events at the time?
Learn to catch your blaming tendencies before they go out and hurt someone, especially your partner.
Dr. Robert Solley is a psychologist specializing in couples and individual therapy for adults. He is a staff therapist at the Couples Institute of Menlo Park, one of the nation’s leading couples therapy programs.
Subscribe to the free YourTango newsletter!
|
Sources 2/ https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiR2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnlvdXJ0YW5nby5jb20vbG92ZS9yZWFzb25zLXdoeS15b3UtYmxhbWUtaGltLWZvci1ldmVyeXRoaW5n0gFLaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cueW91cnRhbmdvLmNvbS9sb3ZlL3JlYXNvbnMtd2h5LXlvdS1ibGFtZS1oaW0tZm9yLWV2ZXJ5dGhpbmc_YW1w?oc=5 The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
[ad_2]