What Is a Blame Cycle?

We are probably all familiar with blaming and being blamed. Life is difficult and complex; our moods can be mutable and volatile. Having a partner can be an easy and obvious target for some of our general frustration and animus.

We can think of many examples here. Coming home from a stressful meeting at work and battling traffic can make us vulnerable to mood swings when we get home. This is where we are most likely to blame our partner for something amiss at home—dishes not finished, food left out, a pet not fed.

Blaming our partner in this way (who is probably also stressed and fatigued) is likely to lead to reciprocal blame as a protective or defensive response. This can easily escalate and, when repeated, gets locked into an automatic pattern of relating. For couples well “worn” in this pattern, they can often even anticipate blame and pre-empt it, quickening the blame cycles; if left unchecked, it can lead to simmering resentments or, at worst, contempt.

From Personal Blame to “Situational” Blame

We may think that the solution to this issue is merely to stop blame in its tracks: to call out blame that is unfairly allocated. The challenge here, however, is that this can often feel like repression to people, as the frustration and agitation they feel are real. Just calling it out can feel de-validating and like a prohibition on your feelings. We often wish and hope for our relational life to be a safe harbor where we can express ourselves and unbottle what we have masked throughout the day. Saying you have no right to be mad about the dishes can feel like another punitive or repressive action.

What I suggest for couples as an alternative is a shift from personal to situational blame. There is usually a situation underlying and enveloping the couple and their blame cycle. This situation is often precarious and even untenable in some cases. For instance, we may be juggling work, child care, meetings, activities, elder care, and mental health. In this context, things cannot all be achieved and fall by the wayside. The dishes didn’t get done, not because of a lack of intent, but because my child missed their bus and I had to rush to drive them. Or the train was late in the evening, and I missed my workout. Or I spent my evening doomscrolling, got caught in a panic about world events, and felt too frozen to fold the laundry.

Shifting or channeling our frustration, anger, and blame to our situations allows us to experience the reality and truth of our feelings, without suppressing or diluting them. It also opens up the door for potential empathy rather than defensiveness or antagonism from our partner. It is much easier to empathize with someone who is mad at their colleagues, pissed off at a passive-aggressive email they received, or overwhelmed by the unanticipated realities of parenting.

Putting the “I” in the Situation

Empathy comes even easier the more we can locate ourselves in the situation and use what therapists frequently call “I language”: i.e., “I feel overwhelmed and exhausted from our children’s activity schedule”; “I can’t continue with this brutal commute”; or “I can’t stand when our house is always messy and unorganized.” These phrases take our partner out of the equation as a direct cause of our anger and take accountability for our own feelings about the situation. It also opens the possibility for problem-solving and team partnership. Maybe there is something we can do as a team to shorten your commute or help you manage a difficult colleague.

Acknowledging Our Context and Historical Situation

In some cases, situational thinking allows us to develop more perspective on our lives and can alleviate some of the immediacy of perceived crises. For example, some people find it useful to know that parenting in the 20th century is incredibly daunting and historically unprecedented in terms of family or community support. Or that living in a modern urban condominium, separate from social supports, is inherently isolating and tough on mental health. In other words, some of the economic, cultural, and historical situations we find ourselves in are largely responsible for some of the anxieties, stress, and hardships we face. It is not my fault or my partner’s fault, but the fault of the situation.

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That said, this still doesn’t relieve us from our responsibility to engage with these situations in useful, conscious, and kind ways. We cannot abstract ourselves from our situations. We cannot will ourselves into another historical epoch as we might wish. But recognizing these constraints can help build self-empathy and humility when we encounter the limits of our actions in resolving these frustrations.