After Adam fell by partaking of the forbidden fruit, two telltale signs of his fallen nature emerged almost immediately. God called out to Adam and asked where he was, to which Adam replied, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10). After he fell, Adam’s first impulse was to hide—to conceal what he had done. But he knew he was caught when God asked him “Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?” So, Adam replied, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” (Genesis 3:10-12, emphasis added). When he couldn’t hide his transgression, he blamed Eve.
Shame motivates us to hide our failings and weaknesses to seem better and more innocent than we really are. Blame highlights the conduct of someone else as the cause of a problem to deny or minimize our own role. As a career litigation attorney, I know something about this. For hundreds of years, our court system has adopted rules for fault-finding and assigning blame. Skilled attorneys become adept at characterizing their clients as good people and victims of their opponents’ malevolent schemes.
I often tell clients that there are many legitimate things a lawsuit can do for you. For example, a lawsuit can help you recover losses from a business failure resulting from another person’s fraudulent or negligent conduct or assign child support payments to assist in the financial care of minor children. Often a good attorney can protect a weaker party facing intimidation and bullying by a more powerful party. There are also common motives for filing a lawsuit for purposes it was not designed for. A lawsuit is not designed to help you get revenge, prove you are right and someone else is wrong, validate your personal choices, or make you feel better inside. A lawsuit is a poor vehicle for these objectives.
In a fallen world, our legal system is a better alternative than dueling with pistols or hiring private enforcers to violently enforce our own interpretations of what is right and fair. Having a dispute decided by a disinterested judge (a fallible human being), is better than “might makes right.” Repeating an unsourced aphorism the Great Winston Churchill stated, “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” I often say the same thing about our court system: It is the worst system of justice in the world except for all the others. Our court system is all we have left when other, more civilized, attempts at conflict resolution have failed.
As I have been divorced and interacted with numerous divorcees, one nearly universal theme emerges. We feel shame about the divorce and assemble a series of stories and interpretations to convince ourselves and others of the culpability of our partners and our own innocence. In short, we blame. Like Adam, the tendency to blame our spouses is part of our fallen nature. Most often, we are inclined to blame the person closest to us for our frustration, aggravation, or pain. In making this observation, I do not claim that I was exempt from this pattern. I had a very convincing divorce story too. But the day I realized that it didn’t really matter whose fault it was, I began to forgive and heal. The day I began to accept my own role in the divorce was the day I began to grow and become a better potential husband and a better man.
While it is quite natural to work through traumatic feelings after a divorce by telling a victim story over-and-over again, that is a very easy and dangerous place to get stuck. A friend I have known for many years was divorced a year or two before I was. He had a horrific divorce story involving a wife that committed adultery, accusations that limited his contact with his children, and financial ruin. Telling the story in elaborate detail with colorful adjectives became a sort of obsession with him. At first, talking with him felt therapeutic because we were commiserating, and validating each other. But as I healed, he got more stuck in the mud, and his anger at his former wife continued to multiply.
I have moved on from the pain of my divorce and been happily married to Cathy for more than seven years, while my friend continues to nurse his pain and blame his former wife more than 15 years after the divorce was final. I saw his brother at a social event last week and he reported that my friend is still re-telling the same victim story to anyone who will listen. I am not suggesting that my friend’s anger is unjustified or that his former wife’s conduct is not blameworthy. I only ask whether continuing to re-live the story and blame his former wife is serving him. My friend’s obsessive need to re-live the pain of his divorce and blame his former wife for his misery seems to get in the way of his desire to move forward and build a better life for himself and his children.
If we want those around us to work constructively to resolve problems, blame is counterproductive. Blame encourages rationalization and defensiveness because no one wants to “be the bad guy.” I am less likely to make changes in the way I am doing things if changing requires me to accept blame foisted on me by another person.
Blame is also counterproductive because it wastes valuable time, brain space, and emotional energy arguing about who to punish rather than working on a solution to the problem. Imagine you are preparing food in the kitchen with another person when a fire starts near the stove and quickly spreads to the curtains and walls. Imagine that you stand in the kitchen arguing with the other person about who is to blame for the fire as it continues to spread and threaten the entire house. This absurd scenario illustrates how ridiculous it is to immediately jump to arguing about whose fault a problem was instead of focusing on solutions.
In my experience, arguments over blame quickly become a race to the bottom about who is the worst and most inconsiderate person. Insults and offenses saved up from the past resurface as ammunition—opening the validity of the entire relationship to question and attacking one others’ value as spouses. The argument escalates and causes trauma that can last for years or even decades. But if we stop worrying about who is to blame, we can simply work on solving the problem. Would you like to work on fixing a problem with someone who helps you feel valued in the process; or would you prefer to work with someone who is invested in holding you to account, making you the bad guy, or extracting an apology or an admission of guilt from you? Blame impedes healthy problem solving.
Blame also naturally drives a wedge between people. We are reluctant to confide in and be vulnerable with people who judge and blame us. Jesus counseled us to look to our own problems rather than trying to blame someone else. Jesus said:
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Matthew 7:1-3).
Blame denies the grace of Christ and focuses on what is wrong with the other person. Satan is sometimes referred to in the scriptures as “the accuser” who accuses believers “before our God day and night” (Revelation 12:10). What are we doing when we blame our loved ones for causing problems in our relationships, even sometimes using the scriptures or the teachings of Church authorities to validate our accusations?
I believe blame is seldom a useful concept in relationships and very often destructive. If you are divorced and have woven an elaborate story designed to convince yourself and others that your former spouse was to blame for the trouble in your marriage, please ask yourself if your focus on your spouse’s shortcomings was also a contributing factor. I do not intend to shame you by posing this question. We are all learning. Making mistakes—even serious mistakes—is one of the ways we learn. At times, we may have convinced ourselves that faultfinding and blame are justified because we are simply trying to make our spouses better and guide our families to celestial glory. We become impatient and exasperated with their lack of progress as we interpret that. I believe that blame seldom makes people want to do better. Blame makes adversaries.
When Jesus saw a multitude preparing to stone a woman caught in adultery, he said to them, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7). Unwilling to take the blame for their own sins, the mob dispersed and Jesus said to the woman, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). Jesus was not concerned about punishing the woman for her sin or validating the accusations against her. He simply wanted her to be better. And the way he showed us to do that was by offering compassion and love and giving the woman a safe place to confess her mistakes. He didn’t blame or punish her. He simply asked her to change.
Blame in a relationship:
- Shuts down communication
- Damages emotional safety
- Builds walls of resentment
- Keeps people stuck in the past
- Replaces grace with hurtful accusations
If you are dating and trying to form new relationships that will last, strive to rid those relationships of blame and fault-finding. Instead, be solution focused. As the Apostle James queried, “who art thou that judgest another?” (James 4:12).
My mission President, Robert G. West, often said, “If you must err, err on the side of mercy.” The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of mercy and redemption—not of blame and punishment. On one occasion when I was serving as a zone leader, I went in to see President West about a situation I had tried to handle by myself instead of bringing it to him early. I was feeling genuine remorse for not coming to him earlier, and I needed his help to clean up the mess. I told him the whole story. When I finished, he asked me how I was feeling. His first concern in that moment was for my well-being—not to blame me for my mistake, which he could have done. He didn’t need to ask probing questions, second-guess my actions, or interrogate me. He knew I had already wrestled with the pertinent questions myself. At the end of our meeting, he asked me to kneel with him in prayer, and he thanked our Father-in-Heaven for my good heart and desire to serve. When we rose after the prayer, President West put his arms around me and told me he loved me. I walked out of his office that day feeling loved and filled with a resolve to be better.
In your dating and eventual marriage relationships, if you must err, err on the side of mercy. Establish patterns of interaction where you focus on solving the problem and nurturing relationships rather than assigning blame and punishing. Whenever possible, assume good intent instead of reaching out with accusations and blame. As you become serious with a dating partner, try to come to an agreement that you will work together to banish blame from your relationship and work together regardless of who was at fault. By the way, I do not write any of this to blame or condemn you. I just want us all to be better.
Resource:
Intentional Courtship can help in this journey.
About the Author
Jeff Teichert, and his wife Cathy Butler Teichert, are the founders of “Love in Later Years,” which ministers to Latter-day Saint single adults seeking peace, healing, and more joyful relationships. They are co-authors of the Amazon bestseller Intentional Courtship: A Mid-Singles Guide to Peace, Progress and Pairing Up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jeff and Cathy each spent nearly a decade in the mid-singles community and they use that experience to provide counsel and hope to mid-singles and later married couples through written articles, podcasts, and videos. Jeff and Cathy are both Advanced Certified Life Coaches and have university degrees in Family & Human Development. They are the parents of a blended family that includes four handsome sons, one lovely daughter-in-law, and two sweet little granddaughters.
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Website: http://www.loveinlateryears.com/
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