When You’re Scapegoated As The Problem In Your Marriage

With a number of couples I’ve seen over the years, there’s a trend in which one partner tends to scapegoat the other partner for all the issues or problems in the relationship or marriage, rather than taking any responsibility for contributing to those problems, which gets exacerbated when the “problem" child” spouse believes this narrative, and acts accordingly against the blaming spouse.

This lack of responsibility or acknowledgment that problems leads to certain dysfunctional roles that get assigned within a relationship or a marriage, which solidifies the marital problems and makes it harder to work through. We all get assigned unconscious roles in our family of origin growing up, and we often end up fulfilling similar roles in our marriage or intimate relationships as an adult. Our job is to identify these roles, and bring consciousness to them to break them, to heal ourselves, to heal our relationship partners and to heal our relationships in general.

In considering this, to the “blamed” or scapegoated partner, you are not exempt from your contributions to the problems in the relationship or marriage. It’s our responsibility within the context of a relationship to take responsibility for our words, actions, deeds, feelings and emotions when it comes to being in a relationship. It takes both partners to create relationship or marital issues, and even through the problems or issues (e.g. alcoholism, infidelity or the like) seem more obvious or heavily weighed against one partner, there are still issues originating from the other spouse, even if they’re harder to see.

In therapy, this “negative cycle” is a pattern or series of behaviors, ways of thinking about our significant others and relationships, and underlying or unconscious emotions that drive conflict, contempt and problems. They also drive behaviors like cheating, depression, substance abuse and other destructive and self-destructive tendencies that partners can fall into. Identifying this negative cycle and learning how to repair it, there is less emphasis on investing in these destructive patterns that harm or threaten your valued relationship.

If not worked on, this cycle can fester over years, or decades, and create relationship erosion or flat out end marriages or relationships. The pattern can move with you into new relationships,and create their own patterns within those, so one cannot really run away from them by ending whet arty perceive as a bad or harmful relationship without considering the negative cycle and their contribution to it.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the effects of scapegoating, or if marriage or couples therapy could be right for you, please feel free to contact me or visit my couples counseling page.