The shame hot potato gets passed through two external mechanisms: anger (aggression) and removal of love (passive aggression). In a marriage, one person typically gets more angry while the other withdraws love — sometimes both do both.
On a nervous system level, simply getting angry at someone is often enough to make them feel wrong. It’s not about what you said — it’s the energetic signal. If someone gets angry at you, most people immediately go to “what did I do wrong?” If someone removes love, the same response. This is the nervous system mechanism for passing shame back and forth.
The intellectual mechanism is trying to figure out who’s wrong — which is essentially what most political commentary consists of. Joe notes that seeking to understand your partner’s truth as valid (“she’s always right from her point of view”) creates a completely different conversation than trying to prove they’re mistaken.
Proving someone wrong provides a surrogate of relief — “like the kind of relief a video game gives you” — but it never heals the pattern. The person feels ashamed, and the cycle continues.
Related Concepts
- Shame gets passed back and forth in fights
- avoider dynamic in relationships
- Defense feels like attack
- Only one person needs to drop the shame hot potato
- Shame is anger turned inward