Step Four, Part Two---Taking Responsibility

We also clutch at another wonderful excuse for avoiding an inventory. Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people--people who really need a moral inventory. We firmly believe that if only they'd treat us better, we'd be all right. Therefore we think our indignation is justified and reasonable--that our resentments are the "right kind." We aren't the guilty ones. They are!
12 Steps and 12 Traditions, pp. 45-46

I talked to an old client last evening whom I hadn't seen in more than a year since she and her husband ended their marital counseling with me. Jane and John had begun seeing me because John was so dissatisfied with Jane. He wanted to live in the city, but couldn't afford it because their income didn't qualify them for the rapidly increasing price of housing in the trendy areas of town---he was unhappy that Jane, who was struggling with significant health problems, didn't make enough money. He complained that Jane no longer kept their home as clean and tidy as she had before her health problems developed. As far as he was concerned, the marriage would be just fine if Jane would deal with "her issues."

John acknowledged that he "sometimes" drank too much and behaved badly when he did, but blamed these incidents on his unhappiness with Jane. He also admitted that he was unhappy with his job and seemed to have advanced as far up the corporate ladder as he was going to, but was not willing to find another job and give up his stock options even though they had been "under water" for a long time.

Despite John's unwillingness to take responsibility for his part of the marital problems, the marriage improved enough as Jane's health and energy returned for them to decide they no longer needed to continue marital counseling. In the phone call yesterday, Jane told me she had fully regained her health, her business had prospered, and she and John had purchased a lovely new townhouse in the trendiest area of the city. But she was calling to tell me that she and John had separated because John was saying he "needed some space."

Jane tried to persuade John to return to marital counseling with me, but he refused saying he felt I had "taken Jane's side" during our work together. If he consented to do any marital counseling, it would have to be with someone who didn't want to talk about his drinking and the effect it had on him and the marriage. As far as he is concerned, it is still Jane's "issues" that are the cause of his unhappiness and the reason for the separation.

Over and over again, I find that the couples who come to see me and who make real progress are the ones in which both partners take responsibility for difficulties in the relationship. Conversely, when one or both partners keep focusing on what their partner is doing and how their partner needs to deal with his/her "issues," there is never any genuine, lasting improvement in the relationship. Either there is a temporary improvement because the circumstances in one partner's life change, as was the case with John and Jane, or the couple decides that counseling isn't working and it's time to quit.

One of the major reasons that I so strongly support both partners being involved in 12-Step programs in recovery is the program's insistence that we take our own inventory and accept responsibility for our own unskillful actions and attitudes while refraining from taking our partner's inventory. Just as willingness to take responsibility for our own behavior is the key to our sobriety, so also is it the key to a happy relationship. When both partners can move away from the stance that "I am not the guilty one; he/she is!", then they really can undo the wreckage of the past and move on to a much more satisfying relationship.