Accountability

Accountability isn’t optional.

You can’t float through life blaming everything on bad luck, your ex, your boss or your upbringing. Somewhere in most of it is a choice you made.

If you keep saying it’s not my fault there’s a good chance it is.

Owning it means taking a long, hard look in the mirror. Your choices, your words, how you handle the people you’re with. Fixing what you can and cutting the excuses.

A relationship works when both people own their sh*t. If one of you can’t, you’re asking for trouble.

Accountability isn’t a word for therapy or an Instagram quote. It’s turning up to your own life, good or bad, and recognising when you’re the one screwing it up.

I’ve done it the other way. I was needy for years and lost a few good girls because of it. For a long time the story I told was that they couldn’t handle how much I cared. The honest version, which I wrote about in Neediness, is that I was hard work, and I don’t blame them.

The first version felt better. The second one changed something.

That’s the whole trick. It’s not about being perfect or never messing up. It’s admitting it when you do. Brené Brown has spent her career studying shame, and her finding is that the people with the strongest connections are the ones willing to be seen with the flaws showing. Owning your sh*t is exactly that.

And it’s attractive. Nobody fancies a man who is never wrong.

We all make them. It’s easy to blame your partner, your job or how you were raised for the way you act. Each excuse is probably half true, which is what makes it so useful.

But an excuse buys you nothing. You still did the thing. You’ve just added a reason why you’ll do it again.

When you catch yourself reaching for one, stop and ask one question: what role did I play here?

Not what she did. Not what the boss did. You can’t control them. You can control you. Own what’s yours and drop what isn’t.

You’ll find it’s rarely nothing.

A real apology is more than the word. It’s saying what you did and what it did to her. “Sorry you feel that way” isn’t an apology, it’s a shrug with manners.

John Gottman, who has spent decades watching couples argue in his lab in Seattle, calls these moments repair attempts. The couples that last aren’t the ones that never fight. They’re the ones where the repair lands, and a repair only lands when the person making it accepts their part.

Which is the point. Owning it isn’t punishment. It’s the door to actually changing something. I wrote about the other side of this in Forgiveness: fix it or f*ck it off. You can’t fix anything you won’t admit to.

Here’s something I’ve noticed. You get back what you put out.

When you own your actions, you set the standard for everyone around you. Don’t expect her to be honest about her part if you’ve never once been honest about yours. Hold yourself to it and you start attracting people who do the same. The ones who don’t tend to drift off, because you’ve stopped playing the game they need.

Jordan Peterson made it one of his rules.

Clean your room. Fix yourself before you start on anyone else.

If you’re constantly pointing the finger you’re blind to your own issues, and your relationships will keep hitting the same wall. Different woman, same wall.

Before you even start dating, get honest about why. If you’re jumping in to fill a hole, own it. Know what you’re bringing to the table, the good and the bad, because she’ll find out either way.

While you’re dating, own your intentions. Don’t ghost. Don’t lead someone on because it’s easier than a conversation. If you mess up, say so. “I could’ve handled that better” does more than you’d think.

And in a long relationship, don’t let things pile up. The longer you avoid it, the bigger the bill. If you keep bringing up old arguments or picking at your partner, ask yourself why. Usually it’s pride, and pride is just a refusal to own something.

Nobody’s asking you to beat yourself up. That’s just blame pointed the other way.

Own your actions, own your choices and stop hiding behind the reasons. You’ll get respect for it, from other people and, more to the point, from yourself.

That’s what strength actually looks like. Not never being wrong. Being the first to say so.