Stop The Blame Game - 6 Tips For Couples

Why is it that it is so much easier to blame your partner than to acknowledge your own feelings of fear and insecurity? 

Maybe you are having trouble letting go of old gripes and resentments, lousy partner stories that just won't go away. Or, maybe you are avoiding unpleasant feelings and potential pain.

However, blame begets more blame; criticism and attacks beget defensiveness and counterattacks. An endless negative cycle of causes and consequences, blame and defensiveness will rob your relationship of joy and positivity.  And nothing will ever get done.

You are never going to get anywhere riding the merry-go-round of blame.  Here are 6 tips to jump off this "ride":

1) Claim your moves in the dumb fight cycle.  Look at the diagram above.  Identify:

•  how and when do your "sensitive buttons" get pushed?
• What are your vulnerable feelings (hurt, sad, scared, ashamed) ?
• what do you do when you feel this way (protest, freeze, withdraw, withhold)?

If you are not communicating to reveal, than you most definately are communicating to control your feelings, your partner, and/or the outcome.  Ask your partner to map out the same things.  It is important to highlight the reciprocity in this cycle, how you become reactive with one another.  Doing this exercise as a team works the best.

2) Learn how to translate anger into soft feelings .  Anger is always a cover for a vulnerable feeling.  Communicating with anger pushes your partner, expressing need pulls your partner closer.  

3) Focus on solutions instead of deficits or problems.  Rather than talking about what you want less of, talk about what you want more of. 

3) Learn to catch the cycle early.  Couples usually have just one fight...but they have it over, and over, and over again.  So you will get lots of opportunities to practice.  Learn the following reset buttons:

• Let's take a break and calm down
• Ok, let's start over..."
• I'm sorry..."
• Use humor
• "You make sense..."
• Soothing touch
• "I love you..."

5) See the negative cycle as the enemy.  Instead of me verses you, think us against the problem (the negative cycle).  In impasse, you can ask, "What does the WE need now?"

6) Try to listen with curiosity instead of judgment. The two of you are talking not about facts but about perceptions, feelings.  There is no right or wrong.  

• Listen with your ears to the words
• Listen with your mind to make sense of the ideas
• Listen with your heart to your partners feelings

Developing awareness in the moment, during a dumb fight cycle, will empower you to choose to put connection first - the single, most important strategy for your relationship success.