Hello, loves. Today we are going to be talking about something I hear all the fucking time. I’ve had people reach out to me and say “I’ve had an argument with my partner,” or whatever, and they do one of two things: they either completely blame themselves, or they completely blame the other person. And what they’re actually forgetting is that everything in life has duality. 

Duality Looks Like…

So for instance, you can’t know night if you’ve never experienced day. You can’t experience love if you’ve never experienced pain. You can’t know one without the other.

This is the reality of life: everything has duality. So when we go through an argument or you go through a breakup, we tend to pop out of duality because we’re triggered. And then we go into our ego, and what happens is it drags us into this thing called the drama triangle.

The Drama Triangle: What is It?

Now, the drama triangle is not something that I have created. You could Google the drama triangle if you wanted. But basically, it’s a triangle, obviously. And on each of the points, there’s one “role” there. So on one point we have the victim, on another we have the rescuer, and on the third, we have the persecutor.

What happens here is that we will assume one of these roles, and that automatically pulls the other person into another role. So if you assume the role of the victim, you will automatically make the other person a persecutor and vice versa.

Then maybe you or he will drag a third party into the situation, running to that one caretaker friend who you can always rely on to have your back and be on your side, and that turns them into the rescuer.

So you may be starting to see how this happens, right? Let me give an example. You can actually swap between all of the roles of the drama triangle within one conversation. Let me show you.

So something happens. Let’s say he cheats on you. You would start saying, “This is your fault.” You’re placing yourself in the victim role, and him as the persecutor.

Then you go on: “You are such an asshole.” At this point, you’ve started acting as the persecutor. And then you swap back into, “How could you do this to me?” and bam! You’re a victim again.

Then maybe he gets upset. Maybe you feel you’ve gone too far and you go, “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry, what can I do? Oh my God. You’re right. This is my fault.” And you go into rescuer, right? Can you see how it starts to shift? 

So when you’re in an argument, you’re both basically fighting for the victim position. You’re fighting to be able to say, “I have been wronged.”  But actually, the duality here is that you can both take responsibility for your parts and not take responsibility for someone else’s part.

So let’s talk about the example of going through a breakup. I’m not saying you need to assume all responsibility and absolve him of his “sins,” for lack of a better word. I’m not saying that. This happens a lot in my programs. When I start to educate women on loving men and bringing out the best in men and really seeing their hearts and their sensitivity and their vulnerability, they start to have a lot of compassion for the people that they may have dated in the past. Which is great. Of course it’s great. But they take it too far. They go, “Oh my God, no, I was in the wrong.” And even though he may have treated her like shit, she’s like, “Oh, it was my fault. I can see now that he’s just an innocent little boy inside an adult body. This is on me.” And I’m like, no. No, no, no. You can take responsibility for your part, of course, and you can say, “I can see that maybe I was activating some wounds or our wounds were playing off each other, maybe I could have handled that differently,” or whatever the situation may be, without taking responsibility for his part.

It can be both. You can see how you reacted poorly in the past and also hold the duality of him being partially responsible too. Because when we’re in our ego, it’s one or the other. It’s black or white. That’s actually a thought distortion, and so then we know we’re in our ego. We’re actually not seeing things clearly, and we’re being delusional.

In order to see things clearly at that point, we actually need to zoom the fuck out. You need to intentionally work to notice if you are completely absolving yourself by completely blaming them: “It’s all his fault. He was an asshole and he’s a narcissist.” That might not be true, babe. Actually, it probably isn’t, and I’m going to be talking about that more in an upcoming post. I’m not an expert on narcissism, nor do I want to be, but I think that word gets tossed around a lot where it shouldn’t be, so I’ll be talking about that shortly.

But anyway, you need to consider this: where are you avoiding taking responsibility because you are so addicted to being a victim? Because if you want to have healthy love, that’s not going to fly. Healthy relationships require you to get the fuck out of the drama triangle.

It’s not saying you won’t ever go into the drama triangle. But the important thing is how quickly you get yourself out of it. How quickly do you notice? How quickly do you take accountability?  How quickly does your partner take accountability? That’s the vibe we’re looking for. Not shaming and blaming other people, not shaming and blaming ourselves, not having to rescue each other from your self-imposed victimhood. If you want a conscious relationship,  that cycle just is not going to fly. It really won’t.

How to Get Out of The Drama Triangle

Here’s the thing: you can’t be in the drama triangle without another person. You need the other person to be present in that triangle.

So if another person is dragging you into this, then it’s up to you to leave the drama triangle yourself.  You have to choose that.

For example, a few weeks ago I was being quite dramatic. I was absolutely in the drama triangle, and I was playing a great fucking victim, if I’m being completely honest. And when I tried to drag Drew into that space, he was basically like, “Babe, this is not my responsibility. This is your responsibility. I’m here for you, and I’ll hold space for you, and I love you, but I’m not doing this. And I was like, “Oh shit. Duly noted.” Because with a man who has so much integrity and heart and is so anchored in who he is, that’s just not how he wants to spend his days, which is totally fine. And I don’t want to spend my days being a persecutor or a rescuer or a victim. I don’t want to take part in the drama triangle, and you really need to avoid it, too. But you have to choose to leave the drama triangle on your own. No one’s coming to rescue you. It’s your job to get out of there yourself.

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