Blame in relationships is nothing more than passing shame back and forth. “You’re wrong.” “No, you’re wrong.” Neither blaming the other person nor blaming yourself works — both are corrosive. Blaming your partner doesn’t make you feel better and doesn’t motivate them to change. Blaming yourself prevents you from seeing clearly enough to actually improve.
The deeper issue is that blame isn’t even real. Who do you blame — your partner, their parents, their grandparents, their blood sugar, their boss, societal norms, Beyoncé? The chain of causation is infinite. Blame is an illusion that prevents you from feeling the emotion underneath, which is where actual healing happens.
Joe traces a developmental arc: “At the beginning of the path, you blame somebody else. In the middle of the path, you blame yourself. At the end of the path, you don’t blame anybody.” Self-blame is just as destructive — it abdicates accountability for the other person (treating them as if they have no agency) and generates shame that stagnates the pattern rather than resolving it. Every addict who knows they’re an addict is blaming themselves, and it’s not changing anything.
The alternative is simple but radical: stop adjudicating who’s wrong and start asking “How do we want to be together? What’s our shared vision? How do we move forward?”
“Blame is not true. Am I going to blame you or your parents or your grandparents or your blood sugar?”
“If I blame you, I don’t feel better and I haven’t motivated you to fix anything. All it does is pass shame back and forth.”
Related Concepts
- Shame hot potato
- Blame is an unowned want
- Blame blocks leadership
- Self-blame is a way of holding onto what you’ve lost