Let's Do This Thing 3: Blame

AAaah. Blame.  Where to begin with blame?  It's a really hard topic in AA, particularly in mixed meetings.   I've struggled for months on this topic.  Old school AA says that alcoholics blame everyone else for their problems-that's what the Big Book tells us.  In first round sobriety I learned that if you are pointing a finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at you.  I really love the multiplication of that image: one finger pointing blame at someone else, three fingers pointing blame back at you.  So the question is: what is my part?

Since the day I got sober, I continually ask myself that question.  My counselor seems to actually get a bit vexed with me, I ask it so much in relation to my marriage.  But here's the crux of asking what your part is: even if I'm looking at the three fingers pointing back at me, there is still one pointing to someone else.  Which means there is still blame going on (25% is STILL theirs).  Which opens the door to another favorite alcoholic state of mind: self-righteous indignation.

Blame seeks to say: someone is right and someone is wrong, aka someone wins and someone loses.  Really good blaming adds value judgements on top of the competition: not only do I win, but I am right and justified in doing so and you are wrong to be angry or hurt if I have done so.  It makes me sigh with frustration and resignation just to write about it.  It's just so much a part of our culture in general, and basically the core of what our culture teaches our boys being male is all about.  To get ahead you have to win.  To win you have to beat out others in competition.  Winning may not be everything, but it sure is a HELL of a lot better than losing.  To win you have to walk off pain, man up, grow a pair, and suppress any empathy/sympathy/compassion you might have for the people you just trounced.  Greed is good.

So in my quest to know what a healthy relationship is, I read about verbal abuse (since physical abuse is not an issue).  I've already written about my initial reaction to the first book I read about it in my post Stripped.  Since then I've read a lot more about it (almost obsessively for a while there).  Some call it verbal abuse, some call it emotional abuse.  Those in the verbal abuse camp sound something like this: you are a victim, he is an asshole, it's all about control, get out while you still can because it is unlikely to change and things will probably escalate.  The emotional abuse camp sounds like this: usually he does it to her, rarely she perpetrates on him, and sometimes one starts, the other retaliates, and it goes back and forth.

Both agree and do a great job of defining the different types of abuse and what they look like.  Withdrawal or stone-walling is defined as the worst because when one person refuses to discuss or acknowledge an issue, when clearly their body language/actions indicates there is one, there is no relationship, no relating.  No relationship = no marriage.   If a couple can't communicate, collaborate or compromise on an issue because they can't/won't discuss it, it doesn't mean there isn't an issue, it means there isn't a relationship.

In my marriage, I call it shunning.  It started in the early 00s, and went on for a decade.  The birth of our first child seemed to be the start of it.  I'd estimate we spent 20% of our time stonewalled in "00 and it increased 10% a year.  In 2005, when we spent at least half of our marriage not speaking, our second child was born.  Please don't ask me why we decided to have a second child when our marriage was in such bad shape.  I can only say it didn't seem so bad at the time, and, well, I had my alcohol.  And we had all the trappings: two successful careers, we built our dream house, two kids we both adored, and we kept putting one foot in front of the other.  The decade passed.  Hindsight is amazing.

Post the birth of child two the stonewalling continued on its merry way until we reached about 95% of our time stonewalled.   If you do the math that is 6.65 days of every week not relating.  Then we reached our 40's.  One thing we agreed on: we had everything we ever wanted and we were miserable and we were FORTY-something.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I don't do fear and pain.  I've spent over an hour writing the last two paragraphs.  I look at them and am appalled: how could two people choose to spend their 30s in such a state?  I guess the same way we addicts continue to search for that "first high" in continuing to ingest our drug of choice, which becomes more and more elusive.  It was incredibly painful, and I was incredibly afraid of what divorce would mean.  Oh, and the alcohol didn't work anymore to mask that pain and fear.  Thus, Sobriety Round Two.

Let me return to the point, and close this loop.  When I read the verbal abuse book, I was rocked to the core to see so many behaviors from my marriage in one place.  But I was also violently opposed to being a victim.  It's just not who I am, nor does it align with what I know of myself as an alcoholic.  The central message I got was: he does this stuff to control you.

But this alcoholic has to face her part: AND YOU LET HIM.

I'm not going to lie.  I spent a couple months trying to find labels, reasons, and motivations for why he does what he does.  I would go to the bookstore or look online: why does he stonewall, why does he assume the worst about my motivations, can anything be done, does he have a personality disorder?  Is that why?  What is he re-creating from his childhood?  Was his narcissistic mother the problem or his absent-due-to-work dad?

Also during this period, my sponsor hung me up on Step Two: Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.  I thought I had this step nailed.  Nailed it in Sobriety Round 1, in fact.   Of course we had talked about my marriage, but she stopped me in my tracks, as good sponsors do.

"So what does 'restore me to sanity' mean to you", she asked as we discussed Step 2.  I blathered on about feeling soul-full when I was sane.  That I could relate to people with an open heart and a purity of soul that revealed who I really am to people.   When I'm soul-full it feels like there is a mango in my chest, rather than emptiness.

"And how," she said, "Are you remaining soul-full in relating to your husband?"  OK, it wasn't quite that pointed, I'm condensing to get the message across.  I hope you get the picture, though.  Because the answer was: Shit. Fuck. Damn.  I'm not.