The law of boundaries. Law #2 - The Law of Responsibility

In a relationship each person should support the other; they should lift each other up. - Taylor Swift.

Meet needs. Limit bad behaviour - Cloud and Townsend (2017).

We should support one another and be responsible to one another. We can not and should not be one another.

This law is a bit hard to try to understand.
I am responsible for my actions and myself. You are responsible for your actions and yourself. Narcissistic partners are responsible for their actions and themselves. However, they don't think so.

Firstly, we have a responsibility to love our partners. They have a responsibility to love us.We ought to support them. They ought to support us. Share their joy when they succeed and be alongside them during sadness and anxieties. They should be doing the same for us. We can encourage them when they try to help themselves, such as if they are trying to stop drinking too much or smoking. We can be calming when they are angry and help them cope with what has triggered them. This is being responsible to them. If they don't want to stop though, nothing we can do will make them stop. They have to be responsible for themselves. We can not be them. We are not responsible for their behaviour. They are.

With narcs and psychos it might be other things that us partners are living with and wish we could change. They might be moody and withdraw for days or months because they don't get their own way. They might blame their moods on our behaviour. They might blame a failing relationship on our constant critisisms or our lack of love and attention. They may blame their failures on our lack of support. We then set about repairing the situation. We guard everything we say in case it might be interpreted as critical, we set about being peacemakers when we sense a withdrawl coming on. We offer love and affection to head off unwanted or threatening behaviours if we sense they think we have done something wrong. We are then effectively being responsible for them. We are steering their moods and behaviours - or trying to. We are not leaving them to sort out their own moods and reactions. They need to be responsible for not withdrawing or any other behaviour or reaction they display. They are responsible for dealing with it if they feel criticised. They are responsible for addressing problems if they think they exist. This is the law of responsibility.

This brings me to the second point. Our partners have to be responsible for themselves. When they feel moody, they must look to themselves to figure out why they feel that way and what is going on. We can not do that for them and they must not expect it. They alone are responsible for dealing with themselves and their reactions and feelings. Not us. Similarly, we are responsible for our reactions and behaviours.

Being responsible to and not for a person involves setting boundaries. We must let them experience consequences of poor behaviour. We must not keep rescuing them or the situation. If we do, we will have to keep doing it.

Lastly, if the narc / psycho has done something a normal person would be ashamed of, a normal person would feel shame and the apology and sorrow might follow. Not so with a narc / psycho. They feel no shame. We cannot make them feel shame. We can not be responsible for their feelings or not of shame. They are. When they have no shame in shameful situations we can not make them feel it. They don't, wont and can't. All we can do is look after our own reactions and look after ourselves.

Looking after ourselves might involve not putting ourselves in the situation that leads to their poor behaviour. It might mean being in another room. It might mean actually telling them that we will not be manipulated or coerced. It might mean stating that we feel uncomfortable with something. If we are not ready to set such boundaries or it is not safe to do so the only thing to do might be to ask ourselves what we need to do now to look after ourselves.

I have no answers. For 17.5 years I was unable to assert myself and look after myself. I was always rescuing situations to avoid another of his moods. Heavy, threatening and all pervasive moods. Moods I could feel vibrating in my bones. Those warning looks filled with hate that I so dreaded. The believing that I was sinning by not being a peacemaker and the building guilt from that while he sat back and awaited my meek approach at some point. This just made him feel even more right. I was being responsible for him and he was not being responsible for himself. After all, he was never wrong. Supremely arrogant. A psycho.

A final thought adapted from Cloud and Townsends book - 'Boundaries' (2017);

 We should meet needs and put limits on bad behaviour. 

My hope for you if your are reading this is that you might get a glimpse into what might be going on between you and the narc/psycho you live with. You might be very stressed and feeling like you are always apologising, in the wrong or ought to be restoring and resolving things. It might be that the Law of Responsibility is being violated. Knowing this might be a small and important first step into looking after yourself or making changes. If I had known about the law of responsibility, it almost certainly would have made a difference to me.