My Daily Reflections: Pondering Responsibility

Quote I read recently:  
“no one wants to take responsibility”

I am starting to wonder, if everyone waiting for someone else to take responsibility first, is part of the problem in relationships?

Here is me all these years hoping that others would just somehow know that I wanted to be treated better, and hoping that they would start to treat me better! But I never bothered to do the work until now to figure out how to teach them how to treat me better.

So does that mean that in some small way I am complicit for being treated badly because I did not take responsibility for learning and doing what I needed to do to create a better platform for respect.

If I had done the work I am doing now when I was in my twenties and my thirties, how would my relationships have been different?

I can't go back obviously in to the past and make changes, but I can take ownership that my failure to do so actually contributed to the relationship problems that I experienced. I allowed it to happen.

That is a hard pill to swallow.

But if I can accept that I was remiss in not doing what it took to change me, can I continue to blame others for not changing their behaviour when they did not get any clear indication from me that their behaviour needed changing?

My expectation was for them to change, and I felt hurt when they did not change, but in concealing my disappointment and in not expressing my needs with clarity I actually implied acceptance of their negative behaviours.  OUCH!

If I had given them clear indications of my needs and then had those needs rejected, I might have lost the relationship.  I think it was the fear of losing the relationship that transformed into a lack of my taking responsibility for changing me and correcting my “route of least resistance”; which was to accept that which was unacceptable.  

I think taking personal responsibility is hard work.  It is challenging work. It is scary work!  But I do believe it is an important part of healing work. 

Renate Dundys Marrello

2018 – 09 – 26


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