Bob and his wife Jackie (not their real names) went to a company barbeque hosted by his boss.  Bob ran into his colleague Alan, who wanted to tell him about a “deeply disturbing” letter he had read, regarding Bob.  Bob was immediately tense about this, and went to look for Jackie.  Jackie was in the nursery, preparing their kids to go home when Bob said, “I need a few minutes to talk to Alan.”

Jackie had a headache, and the kids were acting up.  She looked at Bob with an expression of frustration and dismay.  Her face sent Bob over the edge:  ”You have no idea what I’m up against!  Just take the car and go home!” he turned away angrily and went to find Alan.

After Bob got home, the rest of that evening was spent alternating between “the silent treatment,” tense outbursts, and each blaming the other.  

“Why is he yelling at me?  It’s HIS work problem…” was Jackie’s point.  

“Why did she have to give me that ticked-off look?  I’m doing the best I can!” was Bob’s perspective.

You may have already guessed that their fighting is not really about Bob saying the wrong thing, or Jackie having the wrong facial expression.  Their argument is a simple example of something we do every day, and I call it The Blame Game.

Contrary to popular belief: in a marriage, arguments are actually your best friend.  We don’t argue because we’re right and our spouse is wrong (although in the moment, that seems to be the truth).  We argue because there are only four ways we deal with the anxiety that builds up in our marriage.  Given our four options, an argument is actually the least of all evils.  

A quarrel means there is overt, visible, and direct emotional engagement between the two spouses.  That’s actually great news.  The real danger sign is when spouses gradually avoid taboo topics, or find great reasons for why they spend so little time together.  There may be physical distancing between spouses, where one goes out with friends every night, or the other travels a lot on business.  But the more deadly is emotional distancing, where what little communication they have is superficial.  One spouse “marries” his job, while the other spouse marries the children or the bottle.  This keeps the peace in the short term, but this kind of “emotional divorce” is a slow, insidious path either to a real divorce, or to children who act out or have major health problems.  

So what actually happened between Bob and Jackie that night?  We cannot see anxiety in our mind, but it does leave behind “footprints.”  One of the best indicators of the presence of anxiety in our minds is blame (i.e., “Why my unpleasant feelings are caused by another person.”).  

I invite you to recall your last argument with your spouse.  What was his or her expression, or what they said, just before you hit the roof?  From your point of view, you’re upset because your spouse said or did something wrong.  The reality is, your anxiety was already so high that you instinctively were on the verge of your primal “fight or flight” response before your spouse even entered into the room.  Your spouse walked into an ambush that you (unintentionally) had set up in your mind.  You were simply blind to the presence of that anxiety.

“I disagree,” you might say.  ”I didn’t feel anxious, and you’re putting thoughts in my head.”  Maybe so.  But let me give you two pieces of evidence:

Firstly, when I ask couples to tell me what their spouse said or did that caused their most recent argument, many of them can’t even remember exactly.  That tells me that their minds were already so flooded with the “fight or flight” response that they were not thinking clearly.  

But, let’s assume I’m mistaken.  If you’re correct that you REALLY DID get upset because of what your spouse said or did, then why did you choose to handle it in the worst way possible?  If your spouse really DOES need to change their behavior, we all know that the best way to show them the error of their ways is a calm discussion.  You could have corrected your spouse’s mistake much more easily if you spoke calmly, so that he or she could actually HEAR what you were saying without getting defensive.  Getting upset just wastes both of your time and energy in an argument.  

When we get upset, I believe that is automatically a sign that we were already anxious before something put us over the edge.  I’m not saying we’re always wrong.  Of course, sometimes our spouses do say the wrong thing.  However, I AM saying we’re anxiously overreacting if we get upset about it.

For example: something happened at the office.  You’re worried about the implications for you.  But, you’re probably COMPLETELY unaware of how anxious you are about it.  By the time you get home, your anxiety has risen to a level where even a tiny spark will ignite it.  Once you’re reactive and your “finger is on the trigger,” of fight-or-flight, somebody’s going to get shot.  You can’t help it.  Because once you’re reactive, you’ve got tunnel vision, and your perception is now the only “truth” in the world.

So somebody says something with the wrong tone of voice, and you pull the trigger.  And once the first shot is fired, it’s no longer about truth.  Now it’s about fight-or-flight.  Attack or defend.  It’s too late to objectively think, “Gee, I wonder how my own behavior might have contributed to this escalating tension?!”  When the “fight or flight” reflex has flooded our brains, blame takes over our rational thinking process.  

The French sum up the concept of blame quite wryly:  ”On prete souvent ses defaults aux autres,” which means we often “lend” our faults to others!  How generous of us, right?  This is Projection.  

I call the process of projection The Blame Game.  The pattern goes like this:  Something happened.  We feel so much anxiety about it that it becomes unbearable.  So, we (unintentionally) look for a scapegoat to dump it on.  That’s blame.

This begs the question, “Why?  Why would we inflict our anxiety on our spouse?  We LOVE our spouse!”  The answer is, because our “cup” runneth over.  We already have a certain level of primal anxiety in our brains.  This primal anxiety is a survival instinct that served to protect us from danger in Cave Man days.  But in modern life, primal anxiety simply fills the “cup” of our lives with so much chronic anxiety that we’re often “touchy,” and it only takes a little spark to ignite the “fight-or-flight” explosion within our brains.  In short, we chronically overreact to perceived problems, or we pour gasoline all over real problems.  In the moment, however, we believe the other person is to blame, and we remain blind to the role of anxiety in ourselves.  The bad news is, we are unaware that we play the Blame Game dozens of times in our minds every day.  The good news is, we can train our minds to become aware, and to notice when we’re playing the Blame Game.

Our certainty that our blame game is actually true is a little like believing the world was flat 500 years ago.  People were sure of it, and they thought Columbus was a NUT!  They were CERTAIN they knew the truth about our flat earth.  In the same way, in marital conflict, we’re SURE we’re seeing our spouse’s true faults.  We don’t think we’re using blame to cope with our overflowing anxiety.  But training yourself to spot the Blame Game is like sailing that maiden voyage with Christopher Columbus.  When you see for the first time that the earth is round, and your blame of another is actually just your own anxiety, your world will never look the same after that first voyage.  

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