Years ago I worked as a referee coordinator for a soccer program in Maryland. The county I lived in had a thriving sports program and I helped make the games happen. I also refereed in that league. I coached a High School team during the week and refereed in the evenings and weekends.
In one U8 game, I had to give a coach a red card because he dropped the magic F word (No, not fireman). He yelled it at one of his players. We were in the championship game and I knew this coach had been warned before about language and even told that there was a zero tolerance policy for that specific word.
So ran up to him and showed him the card. I explained it was for calling one of his players stupid using that magic word as a modifier in front of stupid.
His response?
He told me it was fine, the player in question was his son.
The kids were 7.
But he had a good reason for cursing his son out. He wanted to win the Wicomico Youth Soccer U8 Trophy.
He was teaching his son what it meant to win and be a man.
Today, I am a therapist.
I spend most of my working week working with people who are trying to create change in their lives. For the most part, I love it.
But, there are days and even weeks where I think dislike it.
I’ve had to sit through people revealing to their spouses years long affairs. I’ve been in the room when people just lied—and those lies weren’t very believable. I’ve sat across from a woman who didn’t think the idea that she would need to stop sleeping with her boyfriend in order for her marriage to her husband to work was “actionable information.”
I witnessed more abusive language than I care to think about.
Probably the worst part of the job is hearing about little children being used. And I’ve heard from adults who are abused as a little child, I have heard from adults, whose grandchildren were being abused. I’ve heard about people being sexually abused by their own parents.
I’ve actually had to tell people, “Hey we can’t do that in this room.”
The most common response I’ve heard is, “Well, he/she just makes me so mad. I know I shouldn’t do that but…”
Everyone has a reason for their own bad behavior.
There’s a lot I’ve learned over the years as a therapist. But, one of the most common things that I’ve learned is that everyone has a reason for their bad behavior.
That reason is almost always an excuse.
An excuse, they wouldn’t accept from anyone else. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had someone tell me that they knew they shouldn’t be doing what they were doing, but and a bogus reason would follow.
Sometimes these bogus reasons are wrapped up in sort of apologies. Those are the types of apologies where a person sort of admits to doing something but mitigates the extent of it or—and this is far more common—they point out what the other person did or didn’t do that “made them do what they did.”
If you’ve been around for any length of time, you know how much I hate that phrase.
So then, the question becomes what do we do?
What if you’re the person who has a reason for your bad behavior? What if you’re in a relationship with someone who seems to always have a reason for their bad behavior? Let’s deal with the second situation first.
If You are in a relationship with someone who seems to always have a reason for their bad behavior.
They yell because they are stressed.
They withdraw because they were hurt.
They lie because they are afraid.
They overspend because money was scarce growing up.
They cheat because they felt disconnected.
They drink because they’re overwhelmed.
Sometimes, the reason matters.
Sometimes, understanding matters.
Of course, we want to have compassion and empathy.
But those things need to be tethered to accountability. Explanations can do that and sometimes they can be an attempt to cut that tether.
One of the most dangerous dynamics in a relationship is when one partner becomes so focused on understanding why the behavior exists that they stop paying attention to whether the behavior is changing.
A useful question is:
“Does this explanation lead to responsibility, or does it lead to excuse-making?”
Healthy people tend to say:
“Here’s why I think I do this. It’s not okay. Here’s what I’m doing to change it.”
Unhealthy people tend to say:
“Here’s why I do this. Therefore, you shouldn’t be upset about it.”
Those are radically different conversations.
It’s important to look at trends rather than intentions.
Many people judge themselves by their intentions and judge others by their actions. In relationships, that creates endless frustration.
You may hear:
- “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
- “That’s not what I intended.”
- “You know where that comes from.”
All of that may be true.
But the question remains: “What is happening to the relationship?”
If the same wound keeps occurring, year after year, with increasingly sophisticated explanations but no meaningful change, then the explanations are serving the problem rather than solving it.
I will often ask clients if they feel the relationship would become healthy if nothing changed over the next five years. Would it be healthy enough that they would be proud of it?
Trauma and triggers don’t excuse poor behavior. Anxiety doesn’t nullify hurtful statements or dishonesty.
Knowing childhood traumas doesn’t mean that a person should be able to be disrespectful or hurtful to the people in their life.
The last question, I’d encourage you to explore is a simple one. If you were this person’s neighbor and they treated you the way they are currently treating you, would you be their friend or would you just be neighbors?
Most people know the answer to that one as soon as I finish the question.
It’s not difficult to recognize the truth of it. Do you think the guy sitting in the room with me whose wife didn’t think it was necessary for her to stop sleeping with her boyfriend didn’t know the answer to that question?
He knew. He wouldn’t be friends with a neighbor who treated her husband that way.
It can be difficult to act on that truth. Sometimes, the hardest part is deciding what to do with the answer. Because every time we decide, we are also deciding what are we willing to pay and what are we willing to risk?
And in that process, we reveal another truth. Everyone has a reason for their behavior, even in how they respond to someone else’s behavior.
The question isn’t whether we have a reason. The question is whether that reason moves us toward health or away from it.
The value and hearing that reason is, it allows us to know whether we are talking about a starting point for growth or a permanent hiding place from responsibility.
Next week, we’ll talk about what to do if you are the person who constantly has a reason for your bad behaviors and what you can do about it to become a healthier version of you.
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