No-fault Marriage

No-Fault Marriage

Don’t pick a fight without reason, when no one has done you harm.

Proverbs 3:30

Virtually every couple we see in therapy is interested in what, or who, caused their problems; they’re looking for a place to lay blame. What they do not understand about problems in marriage, technically speaking, is that causes are not simple matters. Finding fault—in the truest sense—is not easy. Why? Because the influences on a problem are reciprocal. They cannot be pegged on one thing or one person.

It’s one of the most profound secrets of human relationships we know: causality is circular. In a marital problem, choosing the point at which the causal chain begins is pointless and arbitrary. There is no one single cause for anything in marriage.

Does that make you feel uneasy?

Most of us are far more comfortable with a linear cause-effect approach where an unhappy childhood or bad nerves can explain undesirable behavior. The truth is that human relationships are not that simple. A better approach is to focus not only on what goes on inside a person, but what takes place between two persons.^a

The point is that no one is really to blame in a marriage relationship. Both of you have established your routines. And by heightening your self-awareness of the patterns in your relationship, you will learn what moves you can make to positively affect your marriage—without playing the blame game about which of you is the problem. This will free you to be a part of the solution, instead. And you will see that taking ownership for making change will have a synergistically positive effect between you.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to right the fault I see; that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

—Alexander Pope

^a 93