I’m an internalizer. Whenever there’s a problem, I think it’s my fault. I spend countless mental hours processing what I could do to improve. I’m called a perfectionist for it, but really – I think it’s because I’m an internalizer. There’s some innate part of my being that feels like “if only” I could just be better, things would be okay. The reality, of course, is mixed. Sure, there’s often things I can do to improve, but there’s also times when things just don’t align, and sometimes the “problem” isn’t mine. I always look for ways I can make it better because something innate within me breaks when I blame someone else. Of course, sometimes, I do blame someone else. Research shows that healthy adults do both: internalizing and externalizing. This post is inspired by my reading of the book “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents” by Lindsay Gibson; I recommend it for perspective on emotional maturity, if nothing else.

I have the internalizer flaw, though. I keep trying to make it better until I feel so broken that there’s nothing left to fix. I just feel like I’m broken. Period. I lose hope. Then, I have to unpack the depression that comes from that. After all the unpacking, I can finally recognize my role and the roles of others. That was the path to divorce in my second marriage. I won’t label my husband, but I will label myself. I felt like I was responsible and therefore blamed for everything. I tried to defend myself sometimes, but I always left the conversation (or argument) feeling broken. I managed to make progress on fixing some things in that environment, but ultimately I determined that I was too broken to stay with him. I had to leave in order to heal because I was never going to be the picture he wanted. Interestingly, I think he felt the same. I don’t know if it was a projection of his feelings that caused me to feel that way, or if we were just so mismatched in our pictures that we clashed until we both broke. Like clinking two glasses together until one or both breaks.

I think time alone has been the best way to work on this. The problem with being an internalizer is that it’s going to come up with any interaction with other people. Being alone is the only time you know for sure that something is all you, or not you at all. I know now that I can’t deal with dishes more than once a day. I can’t, it’s too much. I know now that I feel safe working in any room in my house, because it’s my house. My problem wasn’t the location, it was sharing my space with people and I didn’t feel safe (not their fault necessarily, just how I felt.) I know now that I can keep my bedroom organized, but the common areas are where the disasters happen. I know that I like the bed made every morning and it’s stressful to me when it isn’t. None of my partners liked making the bed! It constantly stressed me out, and it still stresses me out when it goes unmade for some reason.

So, the short of that is, I’m learning my quirks. I think if we know our quirks and those of a partner, we can find ways to cohabitate more peacefully. It doesn’t have to be our fault. I can’t deal with dishes more than once a day, but my second husband couldn’t stand any dishes in the sink. I like to soak my dishes because they’re easier to clean, but others find that disgusting beyond reason – in a traumatic way. So, we were completely incompatible with the dishes chore. The (non)working solution was that my second husband did more dishes than me, our entire cohabitation. It was nonworking because he resented it the entire time. Even when I scheduled time to do dishes and did all the dishes available, I felt like it was a drop in the bucket. None of the solutions we tried ever made him feel equal. I felt responsible, but paralyzed. I tried, but it never worked.

However, when I lived with my best friend, we found a solution. We both had work to do with dishes, but we didn’t fight about them. I didn’t feel resented or resentful because we found a working solution for our problem. It wasn’t “my fault” or “his fault” – it was a problem that needed a solution. Internalizing and externalizing are completely useless in this conflict. All they do is make the problem worse. The best thing I have done in this regard is to recognize my response (just like with overthinking) and choose to set it aside. Fault is flawed. When there is conflict, fault doesn’t help the resolution. As soon as we feel guilty, we jump into fault – internalizing (mine) or externalizing (yours). Acknowledging that action helps us step out of it and focus on the problem at hand instead of who is to blame for it.

My story this week is about my divorces.

I am divorced twice. I find that people struggle a lot in divorce to reach an amicable separation. Both of my marriages ended rather amicably. No lawyers and very limited fighting (in the divorce itself.) I think that being an internalizer and people pleaser helped me find amicable separation. I didn’t do much externalizing with my husbands. I wasn’t walking out the door pointing the finger at them in the divorce. I was merely saying that I needed to walk out the door, we weren’t going to be able to make it work.

In both of my divorces, there were many open conversations prior to walking out the door. We mutually agreed that the marriage was over. I wasn’t blaming them, they weren’t blaming me. It wasn’t easy, and there was fighting, but it wasn’t anything like what I’ve seen in other relationships. I think it’s because we agreed that we didn’t want to get lawyers involved, from the beginning. I also made a lot of effort to deescalate situations, and to my second husband’s credit – so did he. I took a lot of yelling from both of them, but I kept one thought in my pocket to prevent myself from yelling back: at the end of this, I don’t have to live with you anymore.

One of my first husband’s quotes is “you can do anything if you know it’s temporary.” So, knowing that whatever they threw at me was temporary was what got me through any of the triggering situations. I wasn’t perfect, I got baited periodically, but I did all I could to take the hits, let them feel like they were winning, and negotiate terms. The internalizing and the people pleasing are the reason that I’m not paying off lawyers. We have to be smart, we have to be controlled, and we have to put aside the blame. I was the one leaving in both marriages, so I know that in that respect – it was my fault. So, I could accept that blame from them and move on because I knew I was making the right decision.

It isn’t always your fault. It isn’t always someone else’s fault. Most of the time, fault is useless. However, accountability is gold.

Accountability: willingness to accept responsibility for one’s actions.

If both parties are accountable, internalizers or externalizers, the fault is irrelevant. Let’s all work for that in life.

Love, -S.