Imagine a couple where the wife is very dominating, outspoken and critical, while the husband is more passive, distant, and bumbling. She is the blamer of other, and he is the self-blamer. Over the years, this pattern may intensify. She may run the household with an iron fist, while he becomes more dysfunctional, perhaps to the point of developing depression or a psychosomatic illness.

This is an extreme example, but the pattern can manifest in other ways. Can you think of any couples you know who might fit this model? You’ll probably note that this type of couple rarely argues, although you may be uncomfortable around them because the blamer speaks so critically and harshly to the self-blamer.

For example, Gail and her husband Alan are both doctors with busy practices. They recently placed their one year-old daughter in daycare, but she tripped and broke her arm on the first day. Gail immediately beat herself up for choosing the wrong daycare program, and noted that the pants she had put on her daughter were a bit too long. Alan didn’t try to talk her out of blaming herself, because he too was harboring thoughts that perhaps this could have been avoided if Gail had done more thorough research.

Then there’s Anne, a high-powered executive at a Fortune 100 company, but she feels guilty that she often gets home long after her husband and two daughters. She makes dinner for her family, and apologizes profusely for overcooking the steak as she puts the food on the table. Her husband says, “I can’t even cut this! Were you on the phone while you were cooking?”

Finally, here’s a scenario where truth is stranger than fiction: the night before their trip to Japan, Vicky told her husband that she’d left just enough milk in the fridge for his breakfast cereal. Her husband got up the next morning, ate his cereal, and they departed for the airport-only to get stuck in horrendous traffic. As they worried about missing their plane, Vicky mused out loud, “If I hadn’t mentioned the milk, you wouldn’t have had breakfast and we wouldn’t be late.” Her husband responded, “You always nag me to eat breakfast, so I did what you told me to do.”

Notice that in each scenario, a pattern of reciprocity has been reinforced. The more one spouse blames the other, the more the other blames his or herself, and vice versa as well. Both spouses play a role. Also, notice what you were feeling as you were reading the above scenarios: some people might think, “He’s criticizing his wife! That’s not fair!” But you see, these scenarios play right into our human penchant for drama. We tend to see these scenarios in terms of angels and demons — the damsel in distress and the villain!

But that point of view indicates we have fallen into a trap: the trap of judgment. We are criticizing and blaming. We are certain that the problem in all three scenarios is the unsupportive husband. But is that summation a reasonable view of the reality?

I think that both spouses are responsible for the roles they fell into; remember, they found each other because they have similar levels of anxiety, merely expressed in different ways. In order for Vicky’s husband to be a perpetrator, his wife has to condone being a poor victim of her mean husband. Should we minimize her so much as to suggest that she has no power or intelligence to stand up to her husband? Or that she was a dummy to pick such a mean spouse in the first place?

Bear in mind that I’m discussing an extreme on the blame continuum here. Are abusive, blaming husbands and mousy, insecure wives attracted to each other? You bet. That’s why many, not all, abused wives stay with their husbands. Married life at the extremes of the Blame continuum is definitely not pretty - or even always safe.

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David Code is an Episcopal minister, family coach, writer, and founder of The Center for Staying Married & Raising Great Kids. Read more about his work at http://DavidArthurCode.com.

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