Blame-shifting
Where truth is broken
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Blame-shifting is a subtle yet devastating mechanism. It goes beyond an argument or a misunderstanding. It is a pattern in which responsibility is constantly shifted, in which reality is rewritten until the one who loves and cares appears to be the guilty party. It is a strategy often found in covert narcissism, not in the form of harsh accusations, but through the distortion of the story. Time and again, a narrative is constructed in which the other falls short, while one’s own actions remain invisible.
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I am writing this essay to take blame-shifting out of abstraction. To show it as it unfolds in practice. Because as long as it remains a theoretical concept, it's intangible. Only in concrete events does it become visible what it does: how love and responsibility are twisted into guilt and betrayal, how truth slips away and how you gradually become estranged from your own inner compass. Recognition begins with words. And words often begin with stories.
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In my relationship with my ex, blame‑shifting became a recurring pattern. Time and again it happened at the most essential moments: when it concerned my children, my home, my body. Precisely where I wanted to be most careful, my actions were, again and again, translated into something they were not. Care became guilt. Loyalty became falling short. Boundaries became drama. What remained was the confusion of a world in which everything seems to tilt, where the love guiding your actions is not seen but turned against you.
The call in the night
It was September 2023. I was with my girlfriend at the time when my ex‑wife called. My three‑year‑old son was having a severe bout of croup. In the background I could hear his strained crying, his hoarse voice calling for me. I didn’t have to think twice: if my ex‑wife calls, something is wrong. She doesn’t do that lightly, especially not when she knows I’m with someone else. I left immediately.
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When I got home, I saw the relief in my son’s eyes. His breathing eased, and he could curl up against me and relax. It was one of those moments when you feel how natural the bond between parent and child is. He needed me, and I was there. There was simply no other way to be.
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The next day the mood flipped. Instead of acknowledgment for what had happened, I was met with reproach. The event was rewritten: I hadn’t gone home for my child, but for my ex‑wife. As if my actions had nothing to do with my son’s acute distress and everything to do with some supposed loyalty to the woman with whom I share children. The reality of that night—the panic, the breathlessness, my child’s relief when I arrived—vanished. What remained was a narrative in which my care for my son was recast as a form of betrayal.
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And that is how blame‑shifting works. The facts don’t stay as they are; they get retold, again and again, until you are the one who fell short. Truth becomes fluid and bends toward power. What was, in essence, loving and self‑evident is reduced to a fault, a failing, or a crime. It’s disorienting to live through that. You feel you acted rightly, did what you had to do, and yet you’re addressed as if you were the one who saw everything wrong. In that tension, you slowly lose the ground beneath your feet.
A Birthday in the Hospital Light
My daughter had just been discharged after nearly a week in the hospital with an atypical pneumonia. It was my birthday, but the day didn’t feel festive. She had to follow a strict schedule: inhalers every two hours, even at night. At home we tried to restore rhythm and care, while that evening I had planned an outing with my partner: dinner, a movie and then to her house. It was an attempt to bring a bit of light and air back into the day.
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Shortly after the movie ended, a message came from my ex-wife. My son had an ear infection and was crying for me. She said she would give him paracetamol and wait a bit, but wanted to warn me that I might need to come home. We went on to my partner’s house, where I could still unwrap some gifts, and for a moment it felt as if I could celebrate my birthday after all.
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Just after midnight, another message followed: my son was crying non-stop from the pain, screaming for me and meanwhile my daughter couldn’t get the rest she so badly needed. At that point the choice was clear. I had to go home.
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At first my partner understood. Of course I had to go, she said. I went home, picked up my son from my ex-wife and my daughter could finally get some undisturbed sleep at home. Despite the pain of interrupting my birthday, I knew I had done the right thing: the children came first. Always.
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The next morning I woke up to a message. The relationship was over. No conversation, no acknowledgment of the situation, only the judgment that she was done. The night that began with care and responsibility ended in rejection.
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Blame-shifting often carries this duality. First there is consent or understanding and for a moment reality seems to be recognized. But shortly afterward the same situation is retold in a version where you have failed. What seemed self-evident the evening before becomes, the next day, a reason to leave you. It is as if the ground is pulled out from under you again and again, until you no longer know what you can rely on: your choices, your care, even your love.
Choosing Danger Over Care
When we had been separated for a few months for the first time, she told me she had started a relationship with a man. But as she spoke, I sensed that this wasn’t the whole story. Something didn’t add up. After much pushing and pulling, evasions and half-answers, the truth finally came out: there had been someone else as well. A stranger she had met online, with whom she had had sex twice, just a few days after our breakup, under the influence of drugs.
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I asked her if it had been safe. She said “yes.” Only months later did the truth emerge: it had been unprotected sex. And afterwards, she was simply intimate with me again.
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With the man she had briefly been in a relationship with, it had been safe. When I asked her why, I already knew the answer and voiced it immediately: “Because that’s what he wanted.” She admitted it. Safety was not her own choice. She preferred the edge, the danger, as if destruction gave her more hold than care. The more harmful, the more exciting; the more dangerous, the more real.
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When I discovered that she had lied about this, something broke in me. It wasn’t only about the physical threat, but above all about the fundamental level of trust that was being damaged. This lie was the first hard fracture in the relationship. A fracture that could not be healed, precisely because no responsibility was taken. Instead of acknowledgment, she trivialized it completely. My reaction was exaggerated, she said. Too intense. I was making a drama out of it. And so even the violation of trust itself was laid at my feet.
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That may have been the most devastating part: not only that it happened, but that it wasn’t allowed to be named. That the breaking point was denied, as if I were the one making a problem out of it. Blame-shifting ensured that the lie didn’t stay with her, but returned as an accusation against my emotions. And so the first crack became a chasm that could never be closed.
The Truth in the Therapy Room
Later in the relationship I sat with her in her therapist’s office. It was the period after the second time she had been unfaithful, this time with the after-school care worker of her children, again unprotected. She had never wanted to acknowledge that it was cheating, as if the word itself was too heavy to admit. Yet she went to therapy, supposedly to work on her selfish behavior.
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During that session, the therapist carefully asked at one point if she had permission to use the word cheating for what had happened. Because that’s what it was. Calling the thing by its name. Hesitantly, she nodded, gave permission, as if something finally began to move. For a brief moment reality seemed to be acknowledged.
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But later, after the session, the full force was turned on me. According to her, the therapist and I had ganged up against her, formed a block in which she felt cornered. The fact that she had to acknowledge her own actions, she turned into an accusation against me. It was no longer about the betrayal itself or about the wounds it had caused, but about my supposed role in her humiliation.
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In the end she managed to twist it once again. That I had overreacted. That I had made everything bigger than necessary. That what had happened between her and the other man had nothing to do with me and nothing to do with her love for me. Even in the safe space of the therapy room, where the truth had briefly dared to appear, it was erased again as soon as we stepped outside.
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And so once again it became clear how blame-shifting works: what has happened—however painful and undeniable—is not carried, but displaced. Reality itself is erased and in the emptiness that remains a new story arises in which you must carry the burden. Even infidelity, even lies, even the fact that she continued to have contact with him behind my back and the realization that another person was involved—all of it disappeared behind the accusation that my reaction was the real problem, not her behavior.
The Function of Blame-Shifting
For those who experience these kinds of situations up close, it becomes clear how blame-shifting runs like a red thread through narcissistic dynamics. It is not merely a misunderstanding or an unfortunate way of communicating, but a strategy with a clear function. Instead of taking responsibility for one’s own behavior, the story is continually rewritten so that the blame lands with the other. What is too painful to face within oneself is shifted and the other is made responsible for the suffering that in fact originates from the narcissist.
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Blame-shifting exerts a controlling force. By continually tilting the narrative, the other is kept in a position of doubt and defense. Every reaction can be used against you; every boundary you set can be turned into proof that you are the problem. In this way, power is maintained—not through overt aggression, but through the subtle rewriting of reality. It is precisely this creeping effect that makes it so confusing and exhausting.
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My living situation, too, was seized upon again and again. What in reality was a carefully chosen home base for my children—born out of necessity, but rooted in a nearly thirty-year friendship and an intense co-parenting arrangement—was repeatedly twisted into supposed proof of my inadequacy. The house that was my home became, in her story, an obstacle that drove us apart.
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Blame-shifting also functions as punishment. Ending the relationship by text message, suddenly going silent or keeping distance for days on end—these are ways of exercising power and binding the other conditionally. The recurring message is that nothing is self-evidently good; even loving care can end in rejection. As a result, the partner becomes more cautious, more watchful, increasingly inclined to distrust themselves.
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Ultimately, blame-shifting serves one goal: to avoid responsibility and maintain control, so that the fragile and fragmented self-image can be preserved. As long as the blame lies outside themselves, they don’t have to acknowledge what is truly at stake. But the price is steep. For the partner, reality gradually fades from view, until even loving care and responsibility are made suspect.
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Blame-shifting therefore touches not only the psychology of a relationship but something more fundamental: it undermines the very ground of truth and love. In that sense, it goes beyond behavior or strategy. It cuts into the core of our humanity—into what it means to carry responsibility and care for one another.
Conclusion
Blame-shifting is more than just a strategy within a relationship. It is an assault on the very ground of truth and love. Time and again, reality was rewritten into a story in which I was the guilty one. The cry of my children in the night, the care surrounding sickness and vulnerability, the infidelity that was not allowed to be named—each time the factual situation disappeared behind a narrative that cast me as the perpetrator.
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Philosophically, this strikes at the heart of responsibility. Levinas described it as a response to the appeal of the other, visible in the vulnerability of the face. In my experience, that appeal was audible in the voices of my children, tangible in their need. Blame-shifting inverted this: care itself became an accusation, love became betrayal. In doing so, not only was my own conduct undermined, but so too the very idea that truth and responsibility are self-evident foundations of human coexistence.
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And yet something remained standing. My journals offered me support; they bore witness to the reality that was repeatedly denied. They became my silent proof that truth does exist, and that love cannot disappear, even when it is distorted.
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Blame-shifting is therefore not only psychologically destabilizing, but touches something fundamentally human. It disrupts the space in which we can meet each other in truth and love. That is precisely why it is so important to name it and make it visible in stories. To call the thing by its name. For where reality can once again be shared, a path to healing opens—and love can return as the ground that carries us.
