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You're the screw-up. Whatever happened, it's your fault! You should have done something different. It's all you.
The interesting thing about responsibility is that it cannot be assumed or assigned without conferring power. Almost everyone wants to argue about that, but it is an unavoidable fact. Power and responsibility go hand-in-hand. Just think, if you are totally to blame for something, then it logically follows that you have the complete power to change it. You made it go bad, you must have the power to make things right.
This works fine when we're talking about one person's action or inaction. You didn't mail your boss' package. You didn't stop at the red light. You didn't turn your term paper in on time. Generally, all your responsibility.
Things get a lot more murky, however, when we're talking about any interaction of more than one person. Responsibility in relationships takes on a whole different meaning. In families or in couple relationships, assigning blame gets mathematical…you have to divide it by two.
Assigning blame involves spelling out the power in a relationship and if only one person has it, then the other one hasn't been carrying enough of the load.
If a couple breaks up and one party proclaims, "It's all my fault," I get confused. Since when did you get to be King? When it comes to human interaction, you can't really assign blame to just one party. Even if we're talking about cheating--and let's just say that one person did unzip something--some part of the relationship problems has to belong to both of you.
Relationships are incredibly complex. The issues that come up have to be addressed by both individuals. No one person caused the problems and no one person can fix them all. If, as so many people say, one partner just won't work on the problems, then the other partner has options. There are always a full range of things to be done in this event. So if the other guy won't deal with things, then the ball's in your court as to how you're going to deal with your partner not dealing.
The link between responsibility and power is easily missed. Lots of time one person in a relationship will say, with great nobility, "It's my fault. I'm totally to blame." But if this is true, the other person in the relationship had no say-so, no power. If everything rides on one person's shoulders, then the other person is completely a victim and that's never the case in relationships.
It's not always your fault, but it can't hurt to look at what you'd do differently next time!
