Stop Playing The Blame Game
Before I blocked communication with my ex-husband, he texted and emailed me multiple times a day blaming me for his unhappiness and anger.
Eight years after our divorce, these messages are still coming, even in response to simple logistical questions like “can you pick up our daughter from school.” His constant harassment and the way he jabs at my abandonment wounds invades my thoughts and keeps me awake at night. His accusations even make me short-tempered with my daughter, which breaks my heart, because all I’ve ever wanted was to be the mom I didn’t get to have.
In his communications, he threatens to leave her, or to hurt himself, and claims that his life is worthless and that it is all my fault. These messages have been so consistent lately, that I am starting to wonder if he is right.
One of the symptoms of emotional abuse is feeling like you are the one to blame for the conflict and doubting your own experience. “Gaslighting” is a subtle tactic of manipulation in which your feelings are invalidated, and you start to believe that the abuse is your fault and that you are the one with the problem.
My ex’s behavior is exactly this — by shifting blame back to me, he avoids responsibility. By making me question my reality, he keeps me locked in the cycle of defensiveness and co-dependency. If he can make me feel as scared and alone as he is, only then will he feel “understood.” He keeps me trapped here as a scapegoat, so that he can feed off of me, because he is a vampire and I have been his energy source since the day we met. I still refuse to let him steal my joy and my passion for life, but I do fear that if I stop letting him suck me dry, our daughter will be next.
One day, in order to prove to myself that I am not crazy, I print out all of his threatening emails and the screenshots of all his text messages, and match them up with the “warning signs of emotional abuse.” As soon as I do this, it becomes clear that his communication has been continuously violent, and that I am not making any of this up. I am indeed the great villain in his life story, just as he is the great villain in mine. He lives his life in victim mode, which is the worst because it spirals on itself, just like depression, getting worse and worse the more you focus on it. The more I try to make him feel better, the more he blames me for his despair.
“You don’t have to keep funding it,” a wise friend tells me one morning, as I complain to her about this latest downward spiral over tea.
I know he is not well. He never has been. I also know that blaming him is not a solution and will only result in more conflict. We’ve been through a lot of back and forth over the years, and even though I know that his recent behaviors are symptoms of his illness, just like sneezes are a symptom of a cold, I still get caught up in his psychosis. It’s pretty safe to say my undiagnosed narcissist, borderline ex is in the midst of another episode. He cannot pay his rent, can’t find work that won’t break his body, and when I give him money to help, he responds by telling me that sacrificing his life to stay here and be a father is a “death sentence.” He calls me “your majesty,” and a “control freak.” My phone and email inbox pulse endlessly with threats, blame, desperation, and so many reminders of why we divorced in the first place.
“Boundaries,” my friend reminds me, “you need to get fierce with your boundaries.”
Dang it, I know. And I’ve tried, really I have. Every morning I sit for thirty minutes in meditation, and practice focusing my attention on anchors in the present moment, so I can avoid getting hijacked by intrusive thoughts. Plus, I already keep his text messages set to “do not disturb,” and filter his emails into a “smart” inbox, so that I can’t see them on my phone. But knowing there are hateful messages in that hidden folder waiting for me is like a radio playing somewhere in the background. It penetrates the silence, and destroys any rest or real peace I could ever hope for.
Plus, how can I set boundaries when our daughter’s birthday is coming up, and we have to figure out who is making the cake, and where she is going to spend the night, and which parent is going to host the next sleepover? How can I set boundaries and be kind at the same time, when I want so badly to help but nothing I do is enough? What does compassion look like, when what I really want to do is to file for termination of his parental rights and tell him to please just freaking get lost and never come back, and that we’ll all be better off without him?
The printed stack of “evidence” yells at me from the pile on my desk. So, I whimsically throw the papers into a metal bucket and light it on fire. I take it outside and place it in the yard where the smoke billows around the house, symbolically cleansing us all from the memory of this toxicity. I get out a giant canvas and a lot of paint and I slice the surface in half with painter’s tape, and I let myself have my feelings all over the damn place. The top part of the canvas is where I let my light shine, painting my brilliance with hand prints and iridescent, glowing colors. On the bottom of the canvas, I splash and splatter hues of darkness and fire and smear them around angrily with a gigantic brush and dramatic, pounding strokes.
Once the pages in the bucket outside have burned down to dust, I mix the ashes with acrylic gesso so that they turn goopy and gray, and add them to the painting, right along the “boundary” between the two sides. Then I pull up the tape, and lay the canvas down on its back, and run drippy blood red along the seam between the two very different parts. Then I tip the painting back up and let the blood run down into the murky, ugly, bottom half, away from the flower garden of my soul and the bright explosion of color that is my heart.
“Resolution”
The next morning I block his number and shoot him an email explaining that he can no longer contact me. I tell him that at ten years old, our daughter is mature enough to decide for herself whether she wants to spend time with him, and I’ve decided to get her a phone so that she can be the one to communicate with both of us about what she needs. She is old enough and wise enough to be trusted, and I am ready to set her free to have her own experience with her father, even if he is unstable. Because I believe in her capacity to discern the truth for herself, the discomfort of this big leap of faith in her is completely manageable, especially compared to the discomfort of what has been happening for the last eight years — which was keeping myself available to receiving his intermittent blame, despair, and threats of violence and abandonment, just so she could have a father. No more.
The painting, still drying in the living room, is ugly and unsettling, but it makes me feel powerful to know that I have set a real boundary this time, and I will keep it. I don’t like the way the ex-husband part is taking up so much space, and overwhelming the me part. The realistic way the blood drips down makes it feel harsh, unhealed, raw, and unfinished. So, I decide to trace around the blood lines in gold, like the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is put back together with gold in the cracks.
The idea here is that in embracing flaws and imperfections, it’s possible to create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art. I surround all the “blood” with gold, and draw trickling lines down into the murky underworld part of the painting, like roots, or lighting, or cracks in the darkness. Satisfied, I hang it over the desk in my writing studio, as a reminder of this commitment to myself.
I will not throw rocks at birds. I will not allow my mental real estate to be occupied by blame and shame, and I will not stoop to the level of hurling accusations back at him, which is like raging at other drivers when I am alone in my car. It is useless, and only hurts me. Stewing in those feelings and that mindset of victimhood is like drinking poison on purpose, and because I am fully committed to my own wellbeing, I choose peace. I choose compassion. I choose to place strong protective boundaries around my right to my own happiness and mental health, and to do the only thing for him that I can, which is to send kind thoughts to that wounded part of him that learned he couldn’t do hard things and that he did not belong in the world.
It has taken me this long to recognize my own role in the ongoing cycle of relational trauma. I have read the emails. I have responded to the text messages with my thumbs of fury pounding on my keypad. I am not blaming myself for keeping it going for so long, rather I am finally seeing that it truly does take two to tango, and I am responsible for my own part in this mess.
And though I may not be able to stop the messages or change his mind, I can choose to take responsibility and make my own path forward. I cannot control his actions, and after all these years I have finally learned that it is not my job to fix him. It hurts to recognize that trying to “help” only magnifies his distress and disempowers him to do his own healing. And I don’t want to hurt him any more because all that hurling abandonment at each other is awful, and I’m sick of it. So, I will not participate. I will not check my “smart” email inbox. I will not receive text messages that unground me and spiral me away from myself, and soon he will have to acknowledge that no response is a response, and that he can make is own path forward without his resentment of me holding him back.
I will not fund this feud with my blood any longer. I am done.
Ask Doctor Cindy:
“I just got out of a relationship where I was actually getting hit… me being “avoidant” was a big reason for his abuse. I feel a little too triggered to dive into attachment style healing at this point. I’m sure you understand. Still processing and shaking my head! I’m finally safe. I don’t know why I never called the cops but after I threatened to, he left me alone for good finally. And I’m ready to call the cops if he ever even shows up here. Gosh I wish I was wired differently!”
Dear Avoidant,
First, there is absolutely NOTHING that you did that means you deserve the abuse. Blaming is never helpful, whether it’s blaming ourselves or blaming others. In the case of blaming ourselves, you are not responsible for someone else’s behavior, no matter what you did or said or believe. Each of us makes our own choices, and we cannot “make” someone else act or behave in a certain way because our behavioral patterns are deeply engrained in our core beliefs. Unfortunately, in the case of an abuser, this means that their behavior was often learned in childhood, and comes from a place of extreme pain, feelings of powerlessness, and that nothing is within their control, unless taken by force. People who are physically violent outwardly were likely taught by example that physically exerting power over others is how you maintain authority and control. This does not excuse violent behavior, but it can help us to understand that it comes from a deeply wounded place. You cannot control the actions of others, but you can control how you respond. I know it’s a big leap, but rather than blame yourself or the abuser, see if it is possible to have some fierce and uncompromising compassion for that part of you that decided you deserved to be treated that way, and that part of them that was hurt so badly they learned to hurt others.
Please hear me say this. It is your birthright to be peaceful. It is your birthright as a human being to be safe and to feel what you feel. You may not have experienced these things in your childhood, and if that is the case, I am sorry that you had to go through that all alone.
Second, it makes sense that you fall back into habitual patterns and protective strategies that have worked in the past. We all do, and these strategies are actually really necessary sometimes to keep us safe. It’s important to honor the wisdom behind the avoidance, as it was really useful once upon a time for keeping you from getting hurt. When you are ready, the task becomes acknowledging this wounded place and reconnecting with the child part of you that decided relationships were something to run away from. This might feel overwhelming, so go slowly and get support from a mental health professional if needed. Energy follows thought, so if you believe healing is possible, that is a big step in the right direction.
Third, it’s great that you can notice that you are “too triggered to dive into attachment style healing at this point.” This is really good information, and gives you the opportunity to spend significant time resourcing yourself, establishing safe resting places for your attention, and marinating in the green zone. We cannot heal or connect when we are still in fight/flight, so this is a great place to go really slow, and to start with simple orienting and sensory awareness practices that can help bring you back into a state of regulation. Trauma healing comes from a place of safety, resource, and connection, and is only possible by prioritizing your relationship with yourself first and believing you are worthy of care, which you are.
With love,
Dr. Cindy
If you have experienced relational violence, and you’re searching for a way to reclaim your mental real estate and set fierce boundaries, I can help. Call Dr. Cindy at (719) 759-9471 and leave a message with your story or question, and I’ll do what I can to answer it and offer some guidance on the Welcome You podcast or in my blog. More resources are available at SafeWithinWellness.com, including guided mindfulness meditations and a free guide to instantly reducing your anxiety. You are worthy of safety, care, and attention, and you deserve better.