Blame shifting: what it protects and how to stop it

What does blame shifting look like?

Your complaint is accepted in form and handed straight back in substance, so you are the one answering questions by the end. It is rarely a flat denial.

• The counter-complaint. You raise one thing, a bigger thing arrives from your side of the ledger, and yours becomes the smaller matter.
• The tone argument. What you said is granted as fair, and how you said it is now the subject.
• The memory argument. It did not happen that way, and after a few rounds you are no longer certain it did.
• The reversal. By the end you are comforting your partner about how hard it was to be accused.
• The conditional apology. Sorry arrives attached to something you have to admit first.

The Gottman Institute places defensiveness among its 4 horsemen and describes it as reversing blame to make it the other partner’s fault. Nothing gets settled, because nothing was answered. Read more about the 4 horsemen of relationships.

Is it ordinary defensiveness or a blame shifting pattern?

Ordinary defensiveness passes and the first subject comes back, and a pattern replaces the subject every time. Most couples do some of this. Reviewing the research in Psychological Bulletin, Bradbury and Fincham found that unhappy couples read a partner’s bad behaviour as intended, selfish and blameworthy, where happier couples read the same behaviour as circumstance.

• Blame follows distress. Blame is partly what strain does to a couple, so blame alone shows a strained relationship and nothing more.
• Does it go both ways? In an ordinary bad patch you both deflect and you both occasionally own something, and in a pattern only one of you does.
• Does an apology arrive unprompted? Look for an apology that is neither extracted, nor conditional, nor offered days later as a trade.
• What happens to your memory? Ordinary defensiveness leaves your account of events intact, and a pattern slowly wears it down.

Read more about why the same argument keeps coming back.

What is all that deflecting protecting?

My view is that deflecting protects against shame, and it is rarely about the dishes. Some people hear that they got something wrong and stay themselves while they hear it.

• Fault as verdict. For others, being at fault is a verdict on who they are, and the whole self goes down with it.
• Fast and effective. Deflection is quick, it works, and the cost lands on the other person.
• Where it was learned. It often points back to a household where mistakes were punished and never repaired, which explains it and does not excuse it.
• A rewritten truth. The deflecting partner has written and rewritten their version so many times that the argument feels unwinnable from the other chair.
• Where it leads. Left alone, deflection hardens into contempt on one side and resentment on the other.

Responsibility is no punishment. It is what makes repair possible at all, and a relationship where only one of you ever carries it is out of balance, however much affection there is in it. Read more about contempt in relationships.

When does blame shifting become a warning sign?

It becomes a warning sign when every confrontation ends with you as the offender and your partner as the victim. Jennifer Freyd, at the University of Oregon, named this DARVO: deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.

• Deny. The person being confronted denies the behaviour.
• Attack. They attack the person who raised it.
• Reverse. They swap the 2 roles, so that they are the injured party and you are the one at fault.
• Self-blame follows. Harsey, Zurbriggen and Freyd reported in 2017 that the more of this response people met, the more they blamed themselves afterwards.
• What the doubt means. Your self-doubt is a recorded effect of the response you got and no evidence that you were wrong.

If you keep leaving these conversations doubting your own account of them, take that seriously. Where a partner controls or frightens you, couples therapy is the wrong room and individual work comes first, separately. That is my position and no research finding. Read more about gaslighting in a relationship.

How do you stop blame shifting between you?

You stop arguing about who is at fault and you hold the first subject in place. You will not win the argument about which of you is worse, and it was never what you were after. You wanted to say that something hurt without the evening turning into a trial with you in the dock.

• Refuse the new subject. When the complaint is handed back, do not follow your partner onto the new topic.
• Repeat once. Say your original sentence again, in the same words, once, and then stop talking.
• Watch what survives. You are finding out whether the first subject is able to survive being raised at all.
• Ask for one thing. Ask for one specific thing, small enough to do this week, and watch what happens to it.
• Tell someone outside. Tell somebody outside the relationship what a normal disagreement looks like in your house.
• If you are the one deflecting. Notice your reflex to explain, correct a detail or produce something your partner did, and say the one true part back first.
• Bring in a third person. If nothing moves, a third person in the room is quicker than another year of the same evening.

Read more about how to stop being defensive.

These steps fail when the first subject is replaced every time, however calmly you repeat it. That is what the session is for.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between blame shifting and just being defensive?

Defensiveness is a reaction in a moment that passes, and blame shifting is the reaction becoming the whole conversation. The test is whether you get back to the first subject, whatever the sharpness of the first answer.

Why do I end up apologising when I was the one who was upset?

By the end there is a real grievance on the table and it is against you. The apology is the effect of the reversal and proves nothing about who was wrong.

Does blame shifting mean my partner is a narcissist?

No, deflecting blame is common and turns up in people who are frightened, ashamed or out of their depth. A diagnosis is nothing to reach for from the other side of an argument.

Does couples therapy help if my partner never admits fault?

Often, yes, because a third person changes what a partner gets away with, and the work does not assign fault. The exception is where one partner controls or frightens the other, which in my view needs individual work first.

How do I know if I am the one shifting the blame?

Notice what you do in the first moments after a complaint. If your reflex is to explain, to correct a detail or to produce something your partner did, you are shifting the blame.

Sources

• The Gottman Institute, The four horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling
• Bradbury and Fincham, Attributions in marriage: review and critique, Psychological Bulletin, 1990
• Jennifer J. Freyd, What is DARVO?

How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.