Why Women Avoid Accountability (And How To Make It Happen)

All right, team, welcome back. Today we are going to be talking about the long awaited topic about women and accountability. Now, after working with couples for a very long time and working with thousands of men for over a decade, one big question has continued to come up over and over and over again, especially from men, which is why can't women take accountability when they are in the wrong in a relationship? You've probably seen the online memes and the videos and the jokes, and this isn't some biased narrative or perspective. This is something that a lot of women openly admit to struggling with. They say, I struggle to take accountability in a relationship. I struggle to take ownership for my part of the relationship. Or they have a couple relationships where the exact same challenge happens over and over again. The relationship ends and they finally come to a place of saying, maybe it wasn't all those guys, maybe I had something to do with that. And they reflect and finally come to the realization that there was some part that they played in it. So I'm going to do two things in this video. I'm going to break down why women are not incentivized to take accountability in a relationship and why there are certain structures that actually lead to women being disincentivized towards accountability. And I'm going to talk to you guys about how you can actually support accountability in your relationship. Because I think one of the most frustrating things for men, for all of us guys in a relationship, is when our partner, when a woman, our girlfriend or wife can't take accountability. It can be very, very frustrating because it's, it can actually halt and diminish the connection and the intimacy and the growth and the progress of a relationship. And oftentimes men will take over accountability, which can lead to the perception that men are the problem in the relationship. Let's dive in. Why do women avoid accountability? And why do some women, again, not all women. This isn't for every single one. So before ladies, you start to go in the comments and tell me that you're the exception, and before I hear the not me's and assume, ladies, that I am not talking about you personally or directly, I'm talking about a generality. This isn't a universal right. Not every single woman on the face of the planet struggles with accountability. This is about the ones that do. So first and foremost, there are different social strategies between men and women when it comes to status. So men gain social clout and men gain social status through accountability, through responsibility. And men who build themselves to take on more accountability, to gain more status they are required to take accountability. And you can see this in the socialization of young girls and boys, where there is much more stricter punishment on boys. You can see this in jail times. You can see this in the stats and the data between men and women who commit the exact same crime. Men will be punished on average, quite a bit more than women. There's a different expectation that that part of being a man and part of being good at being a man is taking accountability, whereas women gain status through social cohesion. So it's less about accountability and it's more about agreeableness. And often this is at all costs, men will attack issues directly with other men. So when there's a problem between men that are in a social group, they, they will force another man to take accountability, upholding moral or ethical rule, right? So if there's a guy in a group that's really stepping out of line or he's betrayed another man, usually that man will be confronted and he will be forced to take accountability. Right? Men are generally the ones upholding rules, laws, ethics, values. It's not to say that women don't do that, but within our system, generally it is men who are holding other men and women accountable to, to ethics and morals and the rule of law. Whereas within women, when somebody steps out of line, the way to socially punish that person or keep that person in line is not always through direct confrontation and holding that woman accountable. It is often things like reputation attacks and slandering and gossiping that are deployed to try and get some type of social contract, coherence or obedience or following the rules, however you want to frame that. The aim is similar between men and women, but the tools that are deployed are different. Men will use direct confrontation, they will use accountability. Women will generally use things, again, like I said, like reputation attacks or gossiping to try and have a woman that is maybe out of line or disconnected from the rest of the social group to try and sort of keep her in line. And, and so while men risk rejection from the group to uphold moral and ethical standards, the only time women will risk moral and ethical rule in order to stay in the group. And so you can see this within, like you have a group of teenage girls, it's very common that they will lie or bend the truth in order to try and fit into that social group where that is less common amongst young boys and men. The second thing that disincentivizes women to take accountability is what I call the patriarchy virus. And this patriarchy virus, I liken it to the idea of original sin. And this is the notion that, right to Christians, everyone's born with sin. And there's a notion in certain parts of feminism that says that only men are born with original sin. AKA every problem in society is because of the patriarchy, and every problem relationally is because of men. And because men are part of the patriarchy, they are quote, unquote, the problem. And the modern narrative that some women have adopted is that women don't need men and the world would be better without men. And so men are really put into this villain role, and this creates this predatory prey mentality, or this victim and villain positioning, where women are all always in the victim position and men are always in the villain position, or women are always in the prey position and men are always in the predatory position. And when you have this type of dynamic set out, when you're in the prey position or the victim position, you don't have to be responsible for things that are going wrong because you are in the quote, unquote position without power. And so relationally, what happens depending on the. The woman that you're with, there can be this very large victim mentality, or there can be this mentality that men are more relationally wrong than women. And what that leads to is when conflict arises, the perception that the man is automatically and natively in the wrong. And so he needs to be accountable for his actions, his behaviors, his beliefs, the way that he talked. And women will kind of disengage, disassociate, let's maybe too strong of a word, but they'll distance themselves from the accountability because the perception is the men are in the wrong, and they are always in the wrong relationally. Now, the last piece is an interesting one, and that's dependency. And you could look at this from an evolutionary standpoint, an evolutionary psychology standpoint, but women, or even just a social structure standpoint, women have really been and are still sometimes socialized to, to be more dependent on men and specifically to be more agreeable. So there's a notion that women have to be more agreeable and statistically are more agreeable, according to the research, which can create a kind of dynamic where taking accountability with the person that you depend on can feel like a threat to their safety. And so for some women that feel more dependent on a man, that have been sort of taught and told that they need to be more agreeable or. Or the inverse of that, right, like, do not be agreeable in any way, shape or form, right, do not be agreeable with men at all because men are in the wrong. This is the previous point. You are disincentivized to take accountability for your actions. And you're disincentivized because if you are dependent on a man wholly and you're in the wrong, then there's a threat and a risk that he might leave you. And so conflict arguments, when you've sort of acted out of line, maybe said or did things that are harmful or hurtful to your partner or the relationship itself, there's a disincentivization to actually take accountability of that because of the fear of if I take accountability for that, the person that I am dependent on or the person that I need to be agreeable to might leave me. And that would cause a lot of shame and a lot of embarrassment and a lot of things that go along with that. And it becomes more complicated when, say you're a stay at home and you rely on your partner, your husband or your boyfriend for financial security for you and your child. That all of a sudden amplifies this notion of I have to be overly agreeable, I can't take accountability. If I do, like what would happen, it might damage our relationship. And sometimes it's not even a conscious reaction. It is an unconscious protection response that's deployed by a woman who is afraid for the stability of her family. So with all that said, guys, let's talk about how do you maintain, how do you actually hold, hold a woman accountable in your relationship when maybe she is acting out of alignment with the agreements in your relationship, when maybe she is acting in a way that is damaging the relationship itself? It's not a personal thing to you. You're not trying to attack her or criticize her. It's just that there are things that are happening that you're like, this isn't okay for me, it's not okay for the relationship. And this is now hindering and hurting the relationship. The first thing is to stop trying to demand or overpower her into accountability. What a lot of men will do when a woman isn't taking accountability for her part in a conflict, in an argument, in some type of dysfunction in the relationship, they will immediately move to anger or aggressiveness. And they will try and either demand through logic and rationality, or they will try and dominate and overpower that woman into a kind of a submission, into accountability. And this is very, very harmful for the trust between you and her. If she feels like you are trying to dominate her into submissiveness, into accountability, she will likely always fight back and it will make it much harder for her to see her part because she will feel threatened by you and as maybe as she should. So you have to move out of and see how you might be approaching, approaching the conversation around her taking accountability or her actions from a place of demanding accountability or trying to dominate her into accountability, which will never produce the result that you want. So where do you begin? You start by regulating when something has happened. You need to begin by making sure that you are in a grounded and as calm place as possible in order to engage in the conversation of around accountability with the woman that you are with. If you are dysregulated, if you are overly volatile, that conversation's not going to go anywhere because that emotional volatility will be the thing that either she uses or becomes an excuse or becomes the thing that she's afraid of that doesn't allow for the conversation about accountability to actually happen properly. The next thing is reinforcing that there is nothing wrong with her and that her taking accountability or owning what has happened is not going to be a threat to the relationship. For a lot of women, what has happened in their life is that when a man has wanted them to take accountability, he's threatened the relationship. He says, if you can't own this, I'm out. If you can't do this, I'm out. And so the relationship becomes a bargaining chip that a man sometimes will use or other women will use. Because again, women are sometimes afraid that men will deploy some of the same social tactics that women in their life has deployed, right? Because when a woman in social circles, when women don't act in the ways that other women expect them to, they will deploy social slandering, gossiping, reputational attacks in order to try and either push them out of the group or get their agreement, basically. So you have to reinforce there's nothing wrong with her. There's not something faulty or defective about her. And what you're talking about is not a threat to the relationship. Maybe it might feel like that in the bigger picture, but you want to reinforce, hey, I want to have a conversation with you about something that's not okay, right? This isn't okay with me. Now, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. And I'm not threatening the safety of the security of our relationship, oftentimes just stating that fact, there's nothing wrong with you. And this doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with our relationship or that there's a thought threat to our relationship is going to put her physically, mentally and emotionally at ease where she can hear like, oh, okay, this doesn't like, I don't need to defend myself because I'm broken or something wrong with me. And I don't need to worry about whether or not you're telling me that the relationship is over or that you want out. So that comes next. And then finally is talk about impact and potentially non negotiables her actions, her behaviors. What was the impact on you? Again, from a grounded place, from a calm place, when she did or said or chose what she wanted to do, say or choose, what was the impact on you personally? And communicating that as clearly as possible in many ways is going to be perceived as vulnerability by her. Hey, when you did that or when you said that it hurt me because of X, Y and Z, or when you did that or said that it made me question whether or not I can really trust you because it felt like you were crossing a line in our relationship. Again, depersonalizing it, not threatening the relationship. You're not demanding that she takes accountability. You are speaking from a place of here's the impact that your actions, behaviors, choices and words had on me. And when you do that, you are presenting to a woman. You are presenting to her the impact in a way where there's an opening for her to take accountability by saying, oh, I understand. Oh, I get get that. Because you're talking about some type of internal impact. So let me know what you would add to this. If there's anything that you think was missed. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Make sure you man it forward. Share this episode with somebody that you know will enjoy it. And don't forget to subscribe. Hit the bell. Notification on Spotify, on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts, wherever. You're tuning into us because the show is everywhere now and until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.