Have you ever blamed someone close to you for misplacing or losing something of yours, only to find out sometime later that it was of your own doing? I call this The Blame Game and it’s definitely something I’ve been guilty of a number of times in life. Unfortunately, it’s also something that can become quite common between spouses and partners, like it apparently was for me this morning, and a few weeks ago as well.
In regards to this morning, it had to do with misplacing my keys. When I noticed they weren’t on the rack as I headed out the door to my recovery meeting, I began searching around the entire house growing more frustrated and frantic in the process. After I thought I had covered every single inch of space in my home with no success, I began questioning my partner by asking if he had seen them. Over the course of ten minutes of time, I went from innocently questioning him to totally blaming him because my last memory of where they were was on the kitchen counter the prior evening. I had convinced myself that he had cleaned the counter up and either forgotten where he placed them or had accidentally thrown them away in the process. But ironically it was me who had forgotten. I eventually discovered this when my partner found my keys sitting on the toilet in our bathroom, which is precisely when I vaguely remembered setting them there when I came home last night. It’s pretty obvious to state how much I felt like a jerk knowing it was my fault after playing The Blame Game with my partner for those ten to fifteen minutes. And sadly, it hadn’t been that long since I had last played it with him either.
The last occurrence of it was just a few weeks ago when we returned home from our weekend Christmas trip to Chicago. As I was unpacking, I discovered I had left my prized teddy bear that has been with me for almost two decades now. To prevent myself from going into any great detail about why this bear is so important to me, the following is the link to my entry that talks about him:
https://thetwelfthstep.com/2014/10/21/my-prayer-bear/
Anyways, my immediate thought when I noticed my bear was missing was of being rushed out of the hotel room that morning by my partner. This time there was no questioning him at all, as I instantaneously went into playing The Blame Game by telling my partner it was totally his fault. I adamantly declared I wouldn’t have forgotten him if he hadn’t rushed me to check out of the hotel. Thankfully though the staff of the hotel ended up being able to locate my bear behind the bed when I called them and they promptly sent him home the very next day. But the damage had already been done to my partner in playing The Blame Game, as it truly was my responsibility to have taken the time to look for my priceless possession, not him.
In each case of where I played this game, neither were my partner’s fault they were mine. Playing The Blame Game is dangerous because it usually only causes anger and resentment to come between two people who love each other. In most cases in my life whenever I’ve played this game, I’ve always lost because each seemed to always come back to my own negligence or absent-mindedness.
So I think the lesson here for me is to pause the next time this happens, pray, and keep the fingers pointing back at me. After all, there truly are no winners in the long run whenever anyone plays The Blame Game…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
