Sponsored by

Fellas,

Most of us understand accountability pretty easily. You did something. Someone tells you it hurt or wronged them. You recognize your part. You own it.

You apologize. You make it right. Hopefully, you don't do the same damn thing next Thursday. Simple enough.

Except people have developed an impressive number of ways to avoid those steps. Some change the subject or attack the way you brought it up. Some give you an explanation where an apology should have been.

And apparently, some have advanced far enough to discover that you can simply apologize without actually becoming accountable at all.

I spent some time reading through conversations from men describing what this looks like inside their relationships. They're individual accounts, not evidence of how women behave as a whole; but individual accounts can still give us something useful to examine. Because although the details change, the destination often doesn't.

Someone raises a concern. And somehow, twenty minutes later, they're discussing everything except the concern.

One husband had been married for sixteen years and said he'd been trying to address the same accountability problem for at least ten of them.

According to him, when he behaved badly, he generally acknowledged it and apologized. Those arguments tended to end fairly quickly.

When he believed his wife had hurt him, however, he described something different. Denial. Reversal. Escalation.

The part that caught my attention was when he said ordinary disagreements tended to go nuclear when he got close to establishing that she might actually bear some responsibility.

Imagine you're trapped in one of those dreams where you're running through a maze. Every turn leads to another wall.

You double back. Try another corridor. Hit another dead end. Then finally, you start figuring it out.

Left here.

Right there.

Straight through.

You can see the exit.

You're almost there.

One more turn and...

You're standing at the beginning of the maze again.

He could make progress. Establish what happened. Work through the distractions. Get the conversation almost all the way to the point where she might have to acknowledge some responsibility.

Then:

Reset.

A new accusation.

A different argument.

Something he'd done.

Something he'd said.

Something about his tone.

Now you've got six fires burning.

Nobody remembers when the first match was struck.

The explosion didn't resolve the original issue.

It buried it.

A 26-year-old man described another variation with his girlfriend. According to him, her position was essentially:

If she didn't personally believe she had done anything wrong, she didn't owe an apology. To be fair, I wasn't crazy about the way he initially worded his complaint either. Reading the beginning of his post, you could come away thinking he expected an apology simply because something bothered him. But as the man continued explaining himself in the comments, his actual complaint became clearer.

He wasn't saying:

“If I'm upset, you have to apologize.”

He was describing something closer to:

“If you don't personally believe you did anything wrong, then there's nothing left for us to discuss.”

That's different. And that's where I think his story becomes useful. Because there's a question it brings up.

Who gets to decide whether another person's experience deserves consideration?

If the person accused of causing the harm also has sole authority to decide whether the harm counts, we've built a remarkably efficient little courtroom.

One person is the defendant.

The same person is the judge.

And wouldn't you know it?

Case dismissed.

I didn't mean it that way.

I don't think I did anything wrong.

You're taking it the wrong way.

That's not coexistence.

Two people are going to experience the same relationship differently. They're going to remember conversations differently. They're going to assign different importance to things. They're going to hurt each other without intending to.

You can disagree with someone's interpretation and still acknowledge their experience.

“That wasn't what I intended, but I understand why it landed that way.”

According to this man, though, when he brought up something that bothered him, the conversation often moved toward his tone or attitude in bringing it up.

And here's where people get trapped. Because maybe his tone was bad. Both things can be true.

But accountability isn't a coupon.

Taking responsibility for your tone doesn't entitle someone else to redeem it for whatever happened before your tone changed.

Another husband said that whenever he was remotely critical of his wife, one of two things tended to happen.

According to him, either she called him a “mean monster,” or she sarcastically declared herself “the worst person in the world.”

Then he added something that caught my attention:

“And many alternatives to that phrase.”

Oh boy. 🤷🏾‍♂️

So this isn't necessarily one sarcastic line that came out during one particularly ugly argument. Apparently, there are variations.

But sarcasm requires something from you. You have to understand what the other person is saying well enough to parody it.

The joke needs a reference point. The sarcasm works because both people understand the distance between the actual accusation and the ridiculous one.

And that's what the exaggeration can do. Make you start wondering whether it was ridiculous to bring it up in the first place.

Because remember, there are only two people in this conversation. And if you genuinely consider the other person’s perspective, you’ll naturally question yourself.

The problem is that your willingness to reconsider yourself can be used against you by someone who refuses to reconsider themselves.

Now you're no longer asking whether they should take responsibility.

You're asking whether you were wrong to ask.

Maybe I am making too much of this.

Maybe this really isn't that serious.

Now he feels he has to explain:

“You know that's not what I'm saying!”

And meanwhile, the behavior he actually wanted to discuss is sitting untouched on the table. Sarcasm doesn't just redirect the conversation. It mocks the fact that the conversation is happening.

There's a difference between someone becoming defensive because they genuinely believe they're being unfairly accused and someone turning your concern into a punchline.

And then we arrive at my favorite one.

In another discussion, one man described a woman who seemed almost like the exception to everything we've talked about so far.

When there was a problem, she apologized.

No three-hour argument. No courtroom.

He could tell her what bothered him, and she could say the words everybody in the previous sections seemed determined to avoid.

I'm sorry.

Sometimes she'd acknowledge what she'd done.

Sometimes she'd agree that she shouldn't have done it.

Sometimes she'd even say it wouldn't happen again.

There you go. Two adults.

One person raises a problem. The other person listens, acknowledges it, apologizes, and everybody gets on with their lives. Beautiful.

Until it happens again. Same behavior. Another conversation. Another apology.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Then it happens again. And she apologizes again.

I'm sorry.

Eventually, he came to a different conclusion.

She had learned that apologizing ended the conversation.

And another man in the discussion immediately recognized it. He'd experienced something similar with a woman who would readily apologize if the apology meant they could stop talking about the problem.

Someone in the conversation called it “false accountability.”

I have another name for it.

Accountability camouflage.

Because camouflage works from a distance. It resembles exactly what you expect to see. But eventually, something beneath the pattern gives itself away.

And if the words change while the behavior keeps walking in exactly the same direction, you know which one to believe.

What happens to you when someone refuses to carry what belongs to them?

Do you chase them?

Do you argue harder?

Do you take on another ten percent of the blame hoping it will finally make them take theirs?

Do you apologize just to get everyone back to normal?

Because something strange can happen when you don't recognize the pattern.

You walked into the conversation with a concern. You were the accuser. Then somewhere along the way, you're explaining your tone.

Defending your intentions. Answering for something you did six months ago. Apologizing for how you brought the subject up.

And before you realize what's happened, you're also the defendant.

The person whose behavior started the conversation is no longer explaining anything.

You are.

That's why recognizing the pattern matters.

Not so you can win.

Not so you can finally assemble enough evidence to force a confession.

So you can recognize when the conversation is no longer getting anywhere.

Pay attention.

People tell us who they are in more ways than words.

They tell us through repetition.

Through what they repair.

Through what they refuse to repair.

Through what changes after the apology.

Through what doesn't.

And once you've recognized the pattern, the question changes.

It isn't:

How do I finally get this person to take accountability?

It's:

What am I going to do with what they've already shown me?

You can spend years knocking on the same door, changing how hard you knock, changing the time you arrive, even changing the words you use when you call through it.

Eventually, you have to consider that the door may never open. Knowing when to stop knocking becomes its own answer.

Until next time

Barkim

P.S. If this conversation about accountability got you thinking, come see what we're doing over in Premium. There's plenty more waiting for you. Link below.