The Blame Game

We live in a society that likes to apportion blame; from politicians to partners and, it’s a habit that we started in childhood with ‘It's not my fault!”

Our adversarial legal system and encourages blame, a blame that is often asserted without fully taking into account relevant extenuating circumstancest.

The media loves blame, it loves to point the finger and denegrate their current target, their ideal story is one of riches to rags, this tilts the way we process life’s events to see that people that didn’t follow the rules can be victimised, bullied and humiliated.

Society needs a set of rules, the religious institutions originally supplied them to avoid mayhem and enforce control. However, we know from experience we all make mistakes, good people can do bad things but it doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person.

When the bad thing that's been done is infidelity; we need to consider our own reaction, not listen to  condemnatory opinions of others, infidelity does not have to end a marriage or partnership unless you want it to. While you are desperately looking for some validation of who you are, the voices of others out to look for blame without seeing behind the closed doors of your relationship, may convince you that you are the victim. It’s a heady mix and it gains its own momentum and makes it so hard for you to see yourself as anything other than victim.

The average relationship now lasts 12 and a half years, the pressures on relationships are so different now from those of previous generations also we are living a lot longer so looking for ‘the right one’ becomes a difficult prospect.

Our culture condemns infidelity; calls it ‘adultery’ and this societal stance makes it harder to accept, it is deemed a betrayal, a right or wrong, black and white with no gradations to take into account the various temptations put in our way like porn, online chatrooms, being bored and in need of stimulation that is so easy to privately access.

This same society praises romance with the expected idea of an elaborate ceremony to ‘tie the knot’, we talk about everlasting love, about soul-mates, about them being ‘our rock’, our best friend. Maybe its asking too much, it describes a blending together rather than appreciating the other's difference, and when it ends we can feel like we are losing part of ourselves an look for someone to blame?

Blame is not helpful, it says you are blameless yourself, you are the only victim and you had no part in it. We need to recognise that just sometimes someone good does something awful. Acceptance is preferabled to punishment and revenge.