Responsibility and Blame: The Troublesome Twins that Can Stand in the
Way of You Overcoming Jealousy
By Susie and Otto Collins
We often advise coaching clients and our readers who struggle with
jealousy in their love relationship or marriage to take responsibility.
This can be confusing if you don't fully understand what we mean.
Mandy, for example, tends to get very jealous. She is hesitant to
take responsibility for how jealous she gets because, from her
perspective, her boyfriend Jim makes her that way.
It seems to Mandy that Jim purposely flirts with other women in front of her.
She doesn't understand why he does this and she has asked him to
stop. Jim merely dismisses Mandy's requests as motivated by her
jealousy which, according to him, she needs to own up to and get over.
Who is correct here?
This is where jealousy become mixed in with so many other potential
issues in a relationship.
And, this is where responsibility and blame virtually become twins
who cause nothing but trouble.
We do not recommend that you throw out responsibility completely.
Instead, we encourage you to re-think what it can mean.
Responsibility does NOT have to mean blame.
Too many times, the whole notion of responsibility gets conflated
with blame. Of course, there is a potential connection.
But, when you notice a problem in your relationship-- like jealousy--
and you look for the person who is responsible and to blame, you are
basically moving yourself further away from what you want...
You are moving yourself further away from overcoming jealousy (or
whatever the challenge is) and you are moving yourself further away
from your partner.
There is a way to separate responsibility from blame.
If you do so, does it mean that every behavior or habit is okay and
good for your relationship?
Not necessarily.
What it can mean is that you AND your mate are willing to look at
the roles that you BOTH play in perpetuating the jealousy and the
disconnection.
You each own up to what you tend to do that causes distance in your
relationship. In fact, you look mainly at how you usually act and
react in particular situations so that you can be responsible for
recognizing your own habits and then making choices to do it
differently.
It comes down to is this...
When you re-think responsibility and separate it out from blame, you
are looking beyond the "it's either my fault or my partner's fault"
perspective that will cause you both to lose out in the long run.
Get solution-oriented.
After their most recent argument, Mandy takes some time for herself
one morning to do some soul-searching.
She is tired of fighting with Jim every time they go out together.
She is tired of feeling jealous and worried that he is attracted to
other women more than he is to her...and she is tired of wondering
what he's eventually going to do about it.
Instead, Mandy is ready to figure out how to truly overcome jealousy
and improve her relationship with Jim.
When you shift your focus away from "who's to blame" and, instead,
acknowledge that you do things that contribute to disconnection and
your partner does things that contribute to disconnection, then you
can start to see solutions.
The tension can diffuse a bit when it's not longer a battle about
who's at fault. You both can talk about and try out possible ways to
turn around some of those habits that move you two further apart from one another.
Perhaps one solution is for you to get curious about your jealousy.
Does it partially come from low self esteem or a painful past
relationship experience?
If so, explore ways to boost your self esteem and heal those old wounds.
Another solution might be to bolster trust in your relationship. How
can you and your mate become more open and honest with one another.
How can you two give one another credit for the ways that you ARE
trustable?
Come up with some concrete ideas to increase trust that you both
will incorporate into your day-to-day lives.
These are just a few ideas for where you might begin to look for
possible solutions to your unique relationship challenges.
What you'll probably find is that as the two of you start working
together-- as a team-- to improve your relationship, jealousy will
more easily fall away and be less and less of a problem for you.
|
All
About Jealousy