Kim's Parents and their children Podcasts

Taking Responsibility Changes Everything You Keep Repeating

• Kim Lee

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Stop scrolling, start owning. We dig into the real turning point in men’s relationships: moving from justification to responsibility, not as punishment but as power. When blame feels safer, it keeps you stuck. When you claim agency, you gain the freedom to act differently and build trust that lasts.

We unpack why excuses show up so fast under pressure—early enmeshment, codependent patterns, and narcissistic defenses that once protected a fragile self. You’ll hear why grandiosity can live inside the relationship while a different self shows up outside, and how that split fuels denial and repetition. Rather than pathologizing, we offer context that clarifies the work: old templates explain reflexes, but they don’t excuse harm. The shift begins with precise naming of behavior—what you did, not why you felt it—and continues with small, reliable acts of repair that don’t hide behind if or but.

Expect practical steps you can try today: pausing under stress, labeling your impulse, choosing a different response, and cleaning up when you miss. We talk about the discomfort—shame, fear of self-recognition, the loss of protective stories—and why that pain is a sign you’re moving toward integrity. If you’ve been repeatedly left or locked in the same fight, look for the pattern and the common denominator. That isn’t a verdict; it’s your map to agency. Responsibility is simple, not easy, and it’s the doorway to healthier love, stronger boundaries, and a model of integrity your children can trust.

If this resonates, subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show. Ready to start? Tell us one behavior you’re willing to own today.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome back. This is Kim Lee, Child, an adolescent psychotherapist. And this is the third episode that's been written specifically for men. It's the third of five podcasts about your role, your understanding, recognition, and responsibility where the management of yourself in your relationship with your partner is concerned. I call this episode the turning point, and it has to do with responsibility versus justification. Now, this is a major psychological shift in change, and the reason for this is when people move from justifying their actions and externalizing the responsibility for their actions onto others, and this applies in all relationships. It is possible to move to a position of responsibility. Now, responsibility isn't an accusation, it's about the honest ownership of your behavior and its effect upon others. Now, when we take responsibility, two things happen. We stop playing a game that really doesn't work, a game that's very often repeated again and again. And the second thing that happens is we're facing the truth. A truth that, if we can face it without judgment of oneself, means that movement is possible. In justification, very often men will remain stuck and they'll say things like, She caused it. Anyone would react like that, I wasn't that bad, I was pushed. Now that's called the abdication of responsibility. What that means is that your behavior is something you are justifying as a consequence of somebody else's, and I'm afraid that just doesn't work. Because actually, your behavior is your responsibility. That means there are no excuses, there is no blame, and there are no conditions. There is no way you can hold another person responsible for your actions. Of course, you might say that the behavior of the other person aroused all manner of feelings in you, but responsibility has to do with how you handle those. To externalize the responsibility and to hold someone else responsible for your actions makes no sense. Now it's quite hard for people to make that move because if they are invested in self-protection for whatever reasons, it's so much easier to say someone made me do it, someone made me feel that way. In my world, that doesn't work. No one makes you do anything. You have agency. For men who are caught up in complex internal psychological struggles, they have never learned that taking responsibility for themselves is something which is a requirement in all relationships. And probably that comes from a background where the man has never learned that actually responsibility for actions is something which is not caused by others. Sometimes in narcissistic personality difficulties, there are some very complex factors which have to do with very early attachments and how feeling responsible for others or being stuck in a state where the feeling responsible for others has caused significant damage can be the case. But also, and I note this quite a lot, that the men who are caught in this toxic cycle have had what are called symbiotic or codependent relationships, and quite often with mothers they've been indulged, they've become people who are an extension of the mother's identity. And I say this from a clinical foundation rather than from one of accusation or blame, but it is very interesting that the narcissistic personality type is one that has never been allowed to separate and grow into the world. Sometimes such people will have a sense of grandiosity that is unbelievable, and they will make all manner of claims about themselves. Oddly enough, they will only do that inside the relationship. Back in the real world, you'll see a very different person. So this shift in responsibility is, or rather, a shift from justification to responsibility brings discomfort because it may bring shame, guilt, fear of self-recognition, and loss of the defensive protection mechanisms that the person has relied upon. But responsibility also brings freedom. And it does this because once the behavior is owned, it can change. Without ownership, patterns simply repeat themselves. And this is true in all relational patterns, in all relational situations. When people find themselves constantly at the wrong end of something, regardless of the nature of that, very often what underpins that is that they've not taken ownership of their part. And again, I say this without criticism. It's a fact. And so, therefore, being a responsible person means being accountable, it means taking some time to ask yourself honestly, what did I do? What do I do? You might not know why, but asking what is important. And the other thing is that when we can say it to ourselves, we can't unsay it. And that is incredibly powerful, but it's also an amazingly important growth step. Very often, men who behave in this way towards women are deeply vulnerable at one level. I'm not suggesting that they're victims, but they have to maintain this kind of toxic pattern of behavior in order to feel real. Yes, they will have had complex backgrounds, they will have suffered all manner of things, but please understand to use that as a justification simply doesn't work. Because that was then and this is now. We want our children to grow in ways that mean that they can survive in society, that they can behave with honor and integrity, and not by abusing others. We have to think about those principles because they are undeniable and they're not negotiable. It's very, very simple. But of course, just because it's simple doesn't make it easy. Now, if you have the courage to face yourself and to be honest with yourself, to put it bluntly, hold your hands up, you're at the beginning of something really powerful. Because if you don't, you will maintain the same pattern of behavior and you will damage others and you will never be satisfied because you will be left repeatedly. Now, people who are repeatedly left normally experience at some point a realization that this is a pattern and that they have a part to play in it. What they don't realize is that actually they've treated others badly. What they do instead is they hold others responsible for walking away. But the truth is the common denominator is you. Thank you for listening, and I look forward to offering you episode four in this series. If you are a man who wants help, ask for it.