You want to play the blame game? Let me ask: how would you feel about someone who constantly blames you for everything wrong in their life? How much does that make you want to spend time with them?

What if you’ve apologized or explained the situation multiple times, but it keeps coming up—again and again, like a broken record? At some point you realize you’re not in a conversation anymore; you’re trapped in what I’d call the victim loop.

Dear reader, I’ll be honest: I don’t offer much hope or help in this post. I’m not sure how to solve this at the moment. If you have ideas, I welcome them.

And here’s the hard part: the victim loop is self-reinforcing. Once someone casts themselves as the perpetual victim, the script requires villains—and sometimes, that villain is you.

And for context—because context matters—I’ll add this: I know and get along well with a number of trans people. But my own children, as I’ve shared before, are a different case. They’re angry, militant, sometimes seeming as if they want to burn everything down. That reality colors much of my experience with the blame and victimhood.

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

Blamed for What I Couldn’t Know

One of my children often tells me that their life is ruined because I failed to recognize their ADHD when they were young. They argue that if I had only seen the signs, everything would be different today.

But let’s pause. In the 1990s, ADHD was not widely understood. Teachers weren’t flagging it, my child was doing fine in school, and I wasn’t trained as a psychologist. To hold me accountable for not knowing something I had no way of knowing—that’s hindsight bias at work.

And here’s another question: their mother was arguably around more than I was. Why isn’t she blamed? Why am I the singular target of responsibility? Or what about their teachers—trained educators who also didn’t identify ADHD? If it wasn’t obvious to them, why would it have been obvious to me?

The truth is that no one is to blame. Not me, not their mother, not their teachers. Life is complicated, and we all work with the knowledge we have at the time. By insisting on blaming others, my child isn’t finding truth—they’re establishing a narrative of victimhood. And that narrative does something: it allows them to avoid responsibility for the choices they are making today.

Cognitive psychology would call this an external locus of control—the belief that our lives are entirely shaped by external forces rather than our own agency. It feels comforting in the short term, but it strips away empowerment. You can’t steer your life if you’ve already decided someone else is holding the wheel.

I’ve explained all this gently, multiple times. Yet the blame resurfaces, often in public, as though nothing had been said. And when they call me out in front of others, it is humiliating. Those people don’t know the whole story. They hear only fragments, and I’m left embarrassed, singled out, and misrepresented. That kind of public shaming doesn’t build connection—it destroys it. It certainly doesn’t make me want to spend more time in public with them.

“At some point, you stop wanting to show up, because you know you’ll be blamed and shamed in public”

Blame is easy; responsibility is hard. But only responsibility brings freedom.

Blamed for Never Being Home

Another grievance I’ve heard is this: “You were never home. I didn’t feel loved because you were always at work.”

It amazes me how perception works—how selective, how distorted memory can become when filtered through strong emotion. My children remember absence, but not presence. They recall missed birthdays, but not the ones I was there for. They hold on to the pain of absence, but forget the everyday sacrifices behind it.

When I try to explain, it often sounds to them like I’m evading responsibility. But I’m not. I’m trying to give the whole picture, the context they’ve lost. Because so much of this lives only in their minds, not in the full truth of what happened.

Here are a few things that tend to get left out of their narrative:

We played together—often. We logged hundreds of hours playing video games side by side. It was bonding time, laughter, competition, teamwork. But when they grew bored and moved on, that whole chapter seemed to vanish from their memory.

I worked two jobs, not by choice but by necessity. Their mother was unemployed for years and unwilling to pursue education or training that could open doors. Even with me working myself thin, we sometimes had to burn through savings or sell what little stock we had just to make house payments. We lost our home to bankruptcy despite everything. Yet my children never went hungry, never lacked for Christmas gifts, never went without a roof overhead.

I traveled for work, yes—but for them. The trips I made, the time away, it wasn’t adventure or escape. It was obligation. Every mile I traveled was in service of keeping our family afloat. And yes, that meant I missed some birthdays. But I was present for more birthdays than I missed. Do they remember those? Rarely.

It was me—not their mother—who created adventures. Their mom rarely liked to leave the house. I was the one who took them into the City. We did all the tourist things—walking the streets, exploring the sights, enjoying the novelty of being out together. We capped it off with an early dinner, laughing, talking, and making memories. We had a blast. But that memory seems to have been erased from the story they tell themselves now.

Ungrateful echoes. My ex-wife—who later passed away—hid bills from me, adding to the financial chaos. She was remembered as the “loving parent,” while I was cast as the absent one. Even extended family I helped—my sister-in-law, for instance—responded with ingratitude. My children saw only the surface story, not the sacrifice beneath.

When you stack it up, what emerges isn’t a story of neglect, but of distorted thinking led by raw, unexamined emotion. And that’s the danger: when feelings are mistaken for facts.

Stoicism and cognitive behavioral therapy both remind us that emotions are not inherently true or false. They are signals arising from our thoughts. If our thoughts are distorted, our emotions will be too. So when my child says, “I didn’t feel loved because you weren’t there,” I don’t question their feelings—but I do question the narrative feeding them.

Love was present. Provision was constant. Sacrifice was real. And joy was there too—on the couch with controllers in hand, in the car heading to the City, at dinner after a day of exploring. But when someone is caught in the victim loop, none of that counts.

“We are disturbed not by things, but by the view which we take of them.” — Epictetus

Blamed for the Divorce

And then there’s the divorce. Though my ex-wife initiated it, I was somehow held responsible.

We even tried counseling, hoping it might bridge the growing gap. But those sessions turned into a cycle of blame. My ex-wife would come in already convinced that everything was my fault, and no amount of dialogue could shift her posture. I remember vividly one session where the counselor gently tried to redirect the conversation—pointing out that blaming wasn’t helping, encouraging her to explore her own role in the tension. She wouldn’t have it. The more the counselor pressed for balance, the louder she became, until finally she lashed out at the counselor. She stormed out, refusing to return. Later, when I asked her to reconsider, her answer was chillingly clear: “It’s your problem, not mine. You keep going if you want—there’s nothing wrong with me.”

That was the moment I realized: counseling was never going to work, because she didn’t want solutions—she wanted vindication. And if vindication couldn’t be found, she would rather quit than confront her own part in our problems.

What my children don’t remember—or perhaps choose not to—was the way she often spoke to me at home. Her phrase of choice was “poor dumb ___.” Always said with a smirk, always framed as a joke, but never without a sting. Words like that, repeated over years, carve grooves into your sense of worth. Even if you tell yourself, “Don’t take it seriously,” some part of you still feels the cut.

Psychologists call this kind of speech demeaning language, and it often functions as a form of emotional manipulation. It normalizes disrespect while making the recipient doubt their right to protest. “It’s just a joke,” the manipulator will say, even as they reinforce a hierarchy where they sit above you. In some cases, it shades into gaslighting—convincing you that you’re too sensitive for reacting at all.

From a Stoic or CBT perspective, the antidote lies in recognizing what is and isn’t in your control. The words spoken are not mine; they are hers. What matters is how I respond. Marcus Aurelius wrote: “If someone despises me, that’s their problem. My only job is not to do anything despicable.” Stoicism teaches that cruel words are a reflection of the speaker, not of the target. CBT would echo this: challenge the automatic thought that “maybe I am dumb” with the rational truth—“No, I am being demeaned unfairly.”

Sadly, my children have erased those years of put-downs from their memory. In their narrative, she remains the “loving parent,” while I am cast as the one to blame. That’s narrative bias: arranging facts to fit the story we want to believe. It’s easier to make me the villain than to wrestle with the reality that their mother’s love was mixed with manipulation.

“What we hear is an opinion, not a fact. What we see is a perspective, not the truth.” — Marcus Aurelius

The Nature of Blame

Blame, once it calcifies, becomes more than a response to pain—it becomes an identity. When someone says, “My life is ruined because of you,” they are really saying, “My life is outside my control.” And that is a deeply imprisoning belief.

Blame feels like power—it feels like control—but in reality, it is bondage. By tying every hardship to someone else’s action in the past, you surrender your freedom in the present. You declare that your well-being is chained to what someone else did, or failed to do, long ago. That is no way to live.

But there is another path.

Freedom begins when we recognize that we cannot rewrite the past, but we can shape the present. Stoicism calls this shifting our focus from what is outside our control to what is within it. Cognitive behavioral therapy says the same in modern language: notice the thought, challenge its distortions, and replace it with a thought that empowers rather than imprisons.

So what might this look like in practice?

Reframe the story. Instead of, “My parent didn’t see my ADHD, so my life is ruined,” try: “My parent didn’t know, but now I do. I can seek treatment and build tools for myself today.”

Shift from blame to responsibility. Rather than, “I wasn’t loved because Dad worked too much,” consider: “He worked because he loved us. And now I get to decide how I want to show love to myself and others.”

Choose agency over victimhood. Every time the mind says, “I can’t because of them,” ask: “What can I do now despite what happened then?” This reframes identity from victim to agent, from powerless to powerful.

Practice forgiveness—not to excuse, but to release. Forgiveness doesn’t erase the past, but it loosens the grip of bitterness. It says, “I refuse to let what hurt me continue to control me.”

“May they learn to release the weight of blame and discover the joy of responsibility and freedom”

And above all, remember this: love and blame cannot live in the same space. One drives out the other. Blame keeps us chained to resentment; love allows us to move forward.

As a father, what I wish most for my children is not that they erase their pain, but that they stop feeding it with blame. I long for them to experience the freedom that comes from owning their choices, shaping their own story, and letting go of the victim loop.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” — Viktor Frankl

When Rational Meets Emotional

When I try to talk to my children about these patterns, I often hear: “You’re being too rational. I need emotion.” Part of me wants to respond, “Do you want to keep feeling this way? Then you need to change the way you think about things.” Because the truth is, our emotions flow from our thoughts—if we never challenge distorted thoughts, the feelings they produce will never change.

But I also recognize the danger of coming across like Leonard Hofstadter’s mom, analyzing instead of connecting. Rationality has its place, but maybe I need to practice more emotional intelligence in how I approach these conversations. Sometimes people don’t need a lecture on thinking errors—they need to know they’ve been heard. Finding the balance between clarity of reason and compassion of heart may be the only way forward.

Conclusion

So here’s where I find myself: how do you have a relationship with someone who keeps blaming you for things you’ve already apologized for or explained? How do you reach across the gap when your words are dismissed, or when you are called out in public and humiliated for what you could not have known or changed?

The truth is, I don’t have a simple answer. What I do know is that blame doesn’t heal, and it doesn’t build connection. It may feel powerful in the moment, but it robs both the giver and the receiver of peace.

And yet, I don’t want to give up hope. I believe people can step out of the victim loop. I believe my children can discover that the power to shape their future lies not in my past but in their present choices.

For my part, I must stay humble. I must keep asking myself, How can I love them better, even when they won’t hear me? How can I help, when they seem unwilling to be helped? I don’t pretend to know the way, but I know that love is still the better road.

So maybe the real invitation is not to win the blame game, but to lay it down. To stop keeping score of who failed whom, and instead begin asking, What can we build from here?

Suggested Reading

If you or someone you love feels caught in cycles of blame, these CBT-based resources can provide practical tools for change:

• Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy — Dr. David D. Burns
• The CBT Toolbox: A Workbook for Clients and Clinicians — Dr. Lisa Dion
• Rewire Your Anxious Brain — Dr. Catherine M. Pittman & Elizabeth M. Karle
• Stop Wasting Your Time Blaming Others for Your Life: 15 Life Lessons to help you take back control of your Life, Relationships and Career – Tamara Hartley
• Help Me, I’m Stuck: Six Proven Methods to Shift Your Mindset From Self-Sabotage to Self-Improvement (The Help Me Series) – Vaughn Carter

Excerpt

Blame feels like power, but it’s really a prison. Caught in the victim loop, we hand over control of our lives to the past. Freedom comes when we shift from blame to responsibility, balancing reason with compassion to build healthier relationships.