Are You Over or Under Responsible?

“I’m a damsel. I’m in distress. I can handle this.” Disney's Hercules (1997)

While it is a fairy tale moment to have car trouble and a handsome guy pulls over to assist and you exchange numbers, being able to stand on our own is an important skill in life. No one ever marries expecting to end up on their own, but it happens in over fifty percent of cases, through divorce or death.

Being responsible is something we should all be as adults, able to care for ourselves, but also to be dependable, accountable, and trustworthy. Within a couple, we should each be responsible for ourselves, but also be a member of the team. Sometimes, though, as a survival strategy, people develop an over or under responsible way of interaction. There may be times when we need to take on this role temporarily - for example, when we have broken a bone. This is natural, but being in this state perpetually is not healthy and can lead to problems within the relationship.

There is an old movie stereotype of the helpless woman that I still see in some shows. The damsel in distress that needs a big tough man to rescue her. The man struggles with the robber while the woman stands in the background screaming. I cheer for her to pick up a chair and break it over the bad guy’s head. Gone should be the days of thinking of women as fragile, incapable, or property.

I am not picking on women here; I see many women who are over responsible, perhaps more than men. The equal rights movement is great, but far too many women now feel they have to do it all. We work, come home, cook supper, drive the children to their after school activities, and then come home and do wifely duties.

It is not hard to pick out the person who is over responsible. They are the one that volunteers to be the designated driver or cover for us at work. The one that has a safety pin in her purse. The guy that has the tool you need in his truck. When you are in trouble, they are the person you turn to.

Spotting the under responsible person in the crowd is a little trickier. They won’t be quick to volunteer for an assignment. They are likely to need to borrow a pen or five dollars because they left their wallet at home. If you won’t do what they ask, they are likely to give you a sob story or make you feel guilty.

Look to the home life of your beloved. These tendencies often have their seeds planted in childhood. What role did they have in the family dynamics? Sometimes not a lot is demanded on us growing up and we are spoiled or rather helpless. Sometimes we are not taught skills to enable us to be competent. On the flip side, some have to take on too much. If someone has come from a family where one parent left or died, the children fill the void, especially if they are the eldest.

How will these tendencies, if taken to the extreme, effect the relationship? If someone is not doing everything they need to do for themselves, are they going to be able to take on the extra responsibility that comes with having a family? Will it feel like you have a child instead of a partner? If we are not holding our own in taking care of all that needs to happen in life, we don’t have balance in the relationship.

While it may seem like a great thing to be an over responsible person, it is easy to go too far. Other people in our lives will heap on the responsibility if we let them. At first it may feel nice to be needed, it proves we have value. But at some point we become overwhelmed or burnt out. We may even come to resent this person.

There is a flip side to this. Sometimes the over responsible person has impossibly high standards, maybe even OCD. We do our best to clean the bathroom, but are told it wasn’t done right and they then redo it. We wonder: why bother? Sometimes we can’t even wrestle control from them. Again, why not just sit back and let them have it?

Some times the responsibility is not physical, but emotional. Responsibility in the form of blame is heaped on us by our partner. They leave us to feel their feelings, to say the things we should, to interact with others when they can’t. If we do this to a partner who is over responsible, they will likely shoulder these things with no complaint.

One last thought to ponder: “...the male who needs mothering is often married to an enabler/over-responsible person.” Bruce Fisher & Robert Alberti