Responsibility in relationships.

Yesterday, my mom acted out in rage. To be more specific, she overreacted quite a bit, even though I understad why she did so. She came home late, having missed her flight because the airline sent the plane off 15 mins early.

When she came home, her husband and I hadn’t cleaned the living room, which she apparently had expected us to do. Then she hit her head on a shelf, which didn’t help. She stormed off to bed having thrown some things around first.

When her husband and I had cleaned up what we could, he asked me what I thought of the whole thing. I replied that I think she was right, that the whole thing was on us.

Because in doing that, I give myself the power to improve and to change. In that moment, I decided to take responsibility for the whole thing because that’s the reasonable thing to do.

But. And I really want this to be a part of this context, because it’s an important “but”.

In relationships there isn’t 100% responsibility to be shared between the parts involved. In order for relationships to really work, there needs to be 100% responsibility from each and every part in the relationship. The divided responsibility needs to be shared instead.

In this scenario, I’ll take on the whole thing that happened. Each and every thing that could’ve been improved on beforehand, all of it that I could’ve had an impact on, I’ll take 100% responsibility for. And in retur, I’d ask my mom to take responsibility for her anger, for her being tired, for her expectations and for her communication.

In all relationships there are infinite amounts of responsibility waiting to be taken. And all of it needs to be shared.