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The Blame Game: When People Blame You For Their Bad Behavior

by BlondieWrites on November 19, 2008

A man walks into a store, searching for a gift at the last minute for his wife for their anniversary.  He browses for an hour, attempting to find just the right gift, yet leaves the store empty handed, unable to make a decision on what to purchase.  The man arrives home, steamed and angry that he does not have his wife a gift, and today is their first anniversary.
 
When he walks into the house, his wife greets him with a hug, and asks how his day went.  He immediately goes on the defensive, saying if his wife had not kept him out with friends over the weekend or insisted they go to dinner the evening before, he would have had time to shop for an anniversary gift for her. He talks to her in an angry and harsh tone, insisting that it is her fault he did not get her a gift.
 
As the wife grows more upset at her husband’s behavior, informing him he had an entire year to find a gift, not just a couple hours after work on their anniversary, and that rather wait until the last minute, he could have made an attempt any time in the last week, month, etc.  She gets angry and says ugly words to him, then gets upset that she said such hurtful words, and blames him for upsetting her and causing her to curse and lose control.
 
These two people are not alone in the way they act, feel, or behave.  They are both playing the Blame Game, a game many people unfortunately play.  Some realize they are playing, and some simply have no idea. 

How do we respond when people blame us for their bad behavior? How do we stop playing the Blame Game? The first step is the need to recognize the behavior and why these actions are occurring.

Let’s take the couple mentioned above, beginning with the wife. It’s understandable that she would become upset over her husband being upset, and more so that she would be at his blaming her for what he didn’t do. But why would she blame him when she lost control and said things that she should not have said? He didn’t cause her to say those words. She wanted to blame him for her losing control. The simple fact is she lost control on her own. Instead of accepting responsibility for her lack of control, she chose to blame him.

And now for the husband’s part in the issue. Why did he chose to get upset and blame her because he waited too long and couldn’t find her a gift for their anniversary? Was it really her fault? Why couldn’t he just be honest and say he waited and didn’t find something rather than blaming her?

Unfortunately, some people make it a habit to behave badly and then place the blame for that bad behavior on another person. In their mind, it gives them an excuse to continue to behave in an unacceptable way. As long as they don’t accept responsibility for their bad behavior, they think they don’t have to admit to how they behave and therefore think they don’t have to change. Instead of just saying they messed up, they blame another person for how they act or talk.

A classic example… Fred greets a customer in his place of employment. The customer is in a grouchy mood. As Fred cheerfully tries to help the customer, his nice mood quickly turns sour as the customer talks in a mean tone to him repeatedly. Instead of maintaining his cool, Fred ends up speaking to the customer in the same mean manner that the customer is speaking to him. After the customer leaves, Fred is upset at himself for acting that way, but blames it on the customer.

When another person talks badly to us or behaves badly towards us, it’s often difficult to maintain our cool, to not get upset at them. And when they blame us for their actions or behaviors, it’s very difficult to maintain control and not fall into the Blame Game trap. It’s important to remember that when someone starts pointing fingers for their behavior, that doesn’t mean that we have to do the same thing.

The easiest way to be healed of this dreadful disease is to simply start taking responsibility for our own actions. When we mess up, look in the mirror and blame the one looking back at us rather than blame someone else who never made us do or not do something. And when someone does blame us, don’t fall into the same trap and act as they are acting.

No one makes us behave badly. No one makes us talk in a mean manner to another person. No one makes us treat another person badly. When we fail to treat a person with love and compassion, we have only one person to blame… that human in the mirror peering back at us.

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Is Your Relationship Toxic? How to know if your relationship is hurting you

by BlondieWrites on March 27, 2008

Toxic relationships are a fact of life for many people, men and women alive, both young and older. Often family and friends can see the effects in the relationship but the one living in it cannot or will not. Some want someone to ‘love’ them so badly they think most any type of attention is love and fail to see that they are in a toxic relationship, one that may not necessarily be abusive, but one that is dragging them down and is not healthy.

One of the first steps to healing is to admit there is a problem. There is always a chance and hope that the spouse will change, but the reality is that change is unlikely for someone who only knows how to hurt another person. It can be said that some spouses do not realize what they are doing, and they can be helped. It can also be said that some know exactly what they are doing, leaving getting out of the relationship as the only healthy solution.

A spouse that loves you is not going to spend their time tearing you down, making you look foolish, talking down to you, or saying hurtful and derogatory things. Rather the one that loves you will want to be near you, they uplift you and encourage you, and they never seek to hurt you or make you sad.

Signs that you might be in a bad relationship:

You and your spouse spend the evening with another couple. Your spouse goes out of his way to make jokes most of the evening, using you as the main target in all of them. When back home, he says he is sorry, yet this isn’t the first time he has done this.

You make it a point to have dinner ready and waiting when your husband comes home from work. He never misses an opportunity to tell you what’s ‘wrong’ with the meal. When the two of you visit his mother’s home and there’s a meal served, he always tells her what a delicious meal she served.

You work hard to provide for your family. Sometimes that means working overtime and not being able to spend as much time as you would like to with your spouse. Your wife constantly nags you that you work too much. In front of mutual friends, she makes comments to them about how you don’t ‘really’ love her, criticizing how you dress, going on about how you love your job more than her, making it a point to make you look bad every chance she gets.

You’ve gained some weight and are working on losing it. Rather than be supportive and encourage you, your spouse tells you how fat you look and makes wise cracks in public about your appearance. She tells you that she won’t make love to you until you lose weight, in front of mutual friends.

Your spouse makes it a regular habit to check your cell phone to see who you have called and who has called you. He checks your email, opens your mail before you are allowed to see it, goes through your purse when you are sleeping.

Your spouse makes it a point to bring up things that will make you cry, knowing that saying certain things will hurt you.

You work at saving money and planning for a vacation with your wife. You’ve had the time off planned for six months in advance and she has known the dates for the vacation all along. Two days before you are to be off to take the long planned trip, she announces she is going to the beach with friends during the vacation time. You’re not invited.

You sit down to talk with your spouse about how you feel about certain things, being open and honest, pouring out your very soul and heart to them. Your spouse laughs at you at almost every comment you make, demeans you, and blames you for their bad behavior. Instead of listening to you, the spouse makes a joke of your feelings.

Perhaps the most hurtful thing about a toxic relationship is the fact that this is the person that is supposed to love you and care for you, but instead they seek to hurt you and cause you emotional distress and pain.

A person in a toxic relationship might have a difficult time letting go of it. Sometimes they feel as that there is no one else for them, thinking that they aren’t good enough for someone that will truly love them and care for them. Often a person caught in a bad relationship stays because even though it is a terrible relationship, their spouse has convinced them that no one else could possibly want them.

This cycle of thinking has to be broken. There is hope and there is healing. In order to obtain the happiness that is waiting, the person living in this type of relationship must make the decision to get out of it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope.

A healthy relationship can be obtained once the person in the bad relationship recognizes the need for a better life and gets out of the abusive relationship. The first step in healing is removing yourself from the relationship.

A loving relationship allows no room for toxic behavior. In a healthy relationship, a spouse listens to the other. The spouse doesn’t seek to hurt you, to make fun of you, to use you as the joke of the party. The spouse in a healthy relationship wants to be with you, doesn’t check up on you all the time, doesn’t use any excuse to make you look bad, doesn’t seek to embarrass you in front of family and friends, doesn’t try to control you.

A healthy relationship finds a couple who are happy with each other and understand each other, who know the other isn’t perfect but accepts and loves the person as they are. They don’t seek to change each other, they stand with each other through anything and everything, and the only tears they want to cause the other are tears are happiness.

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