Let The (Blame) Games Begin! (or Past vs Future)

It goes without saying that families with kids with autism and other DD's are stressed.  Really really stressed.  Stressed to the point that it can challenge the marriage, challenge one's own sanity.  If you have a kid with DD's, you know what I mean.

I've seen couples so burdened by this stress that they engage in an ongoing war of blame.  This is true of those who remain married as well as those who are divorced.  This can result in a great deal of mudslinging, particularly about what happened in the past.  Past hurts and pain can reign supreme in relationships. And we tend to spend a lot of time looking at and reviewing what happened.  It's a way of understanding, digesting at a deep level the course of the history.

Indeed, retrospection is a classic aspect to family and couples therapy.  We examine the family of origin.  What was the nature of the marriage in the family you came from?  What was the balance of parental power in the family you came from?  Were there unhealthy alignments between parent and child?  How did the parents manage their own conflicts?  Did they agree on parenting strategies? Were they close? Affectionate? How did you and your (ex) spouse meet?  What drew you to one another?  Is your marriage similar or different to that of your parents'?  There are innumerable questions we ask in hindsight to understand what the patterns might have been that brought us to our current situation.

And yet......sometimes couples become mired down in what happened and it turns into a blame game that devolves into what seems a game to the death (hence my reference to Hunger Games.)  It is cruel to do, hurtful to see and potentially devastating to children who witness it.

I admit, I've become drawn into the blame game as a therapist.  Trying to sort out who did what when and to whom as a way of trying to create some clarity between the parties.  It's hard work and often not successful.  So recently, when observing a couple playing this most hurtful game, I considered something different.  Let's look to the future. Slogging in the mud of yesterday is so often unproductive.  What about considering what I plan to do tomorrow when we have a problem?  What can I do to change the atmosphere of the relationship? How can I help create a new narrative in our communication style and how we resolve conflict?

Looking to the future is as important as looking at the past.  We do learn from our history.  We also benefit from creating a plan for change and monitoring how and whether that plan is working.  Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City was famous for asking New Yorkers "How'm I doin'?"  He wanted feedback both on what happened and used that to change how he conducted himself in the future.  More of this kind of marital questioning is in order for those couples mired down in the blame game.  Let the (future) games begin!