What would happen if:

You acted as though everything that happened in your relationship was a reflection of you? You considered your relationship an accurate mirror that reflected back to you one or more qualities of yourself.

You took 100% responsibility for your relationship? You didn’t consider yourself 50% responsible and your partner 50% responsible. Rather, you considered yourself totally responsible for everything that took place in your relationship.

Probably the first thing that comes to mind is “how can that be?” Or “is this true?” Or, “I’m not to blame!” How would it be if I said it doesn’t matter if it’s real or true that you are 100% responsible for everything that takes place in your relationship? How would it be if you understood that taking 100% responsibility has absolutely nothing to do with self-blame?

I will say this, if you take 100% responsibility and consider everything that happens a mirror of you, it puts you in a powerful position. It puts you in the position of being able to bring about change. Change in the situation, change in the relationship, depends solely on the individual. The power of change is in your hands not someone else’s!

When you blame your lack of happiness or fulfillment in a relationship on your partner, then your happiness and your fulfillment depends on them. Your happiness is in someone else’s hands. If you choose to blame, then you can only be happy and fulfilled if your partner does what you think is necessary to make you happy and to give you a sense of fulfillment. If they don’t, you spend a lot of energy trying to manipulate them to act in ways that make you happy.

But this is a no-win situation because the more you manipulate, the more you feel your partner couldn’t possibly love you. The longer you play the blame game, the more resentment builds as you become convinced that your partner is communicating, “You are not lovable. You are not enough.”

If you grasp this next sentence, you’ll be on your way to a better relationship:

Whether or not you believe yourself to be lovable is up to you.

When you take 100% responsibility, viewing your partner and relationship as a mirror of you; whenever they do something hurtful, thoughtless, dismissive, even abusive and, instead of blaming them you ask yourself, “Why am I treating myself this way?” And when you are willing to wait for the answer to show up in its own time, choosing to love yourself more and better in the meantime; your relationship and your life begin to change.

A real life example: You’ve repeatedly asked for help with something and your partner will neither commit to helping you nor commit to turning you down. You’re stuck in limbo with an internal message repeatedly telling you that you must not be lovable enough to be taken seriously. That what is important to you must not matter. Resentment builds as you contemplate new and different ways of approaching the subject. Maybe if you put it out there a little differently, they will finally comprehend why helping you matters. But nothing seems to work.

Then you consider the possibility that your partner’s behavior is a reflection of how you feel about yourself. You stop the internal dialogue that tells you you’re not lovable. You get busy reminding yourself that you love and appreciate you. Whenever you want to address the conflict between you, you instead take the opportunity to remind yourself you are loved. You use their procrastination as an excuse to go deeper into your love for yourself.

I cannot predict how this scenario will play out. You may decide you don’t need the help and you take care of it on your own, without recrimination towards your partner for dropping the ball. You may find that they suddenly take an interest and want to either help or explain why they can’t. You may find this situation is the tip of an iceberg of neglect that you are tired of creating and the relationship either begins to unravel or your partner feels the heat of your seeing the truth of things and snaps to attention, ready to attend to the relationship, whatever it takes to save it.

Blaming and manipulation only drive you deeper into self-hate, which is then reflected in your relationship. Taking 100% responsibility and actively loving you more and deeper takes the relationship in a new direction - giving you something to work with.

The blame game is just something the ego likes to play. I have found that discovering what happens if I take 100% responsibility for everything that shows up in my environment, including who my wife is, what she’s about, and how she interacts with me and others, is worth whatever sacrifices the ego has to make. For the past thirteen years, it has been the primary ingredient in creating a beautiful life.

I highly recommend you discover what would happen if you took 100% responsibility.