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“We all have a tendency toward projection in marriage.”

A thought by Kyle Idleman (2014-03-01) from his book, AHA: The God Moment That Changes Everything (p. 120). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Now you might want to know what projection is, so Bill, what is it?

Well, Kyle gives a good definition of it.  He says, “Projection is when we admit the reality of an unpleasant fact, but we deny responsibility. Denial is refusing to admit the reality of an unpleasant fact, but projection is admitting that the reality exists without taking responsibility for it. We just blame someone else.”  In other words we project our blame on someone else.

Kyle says, “Instead of taking responsibility, we blame our spouse.”

He goes on, “Imagine that every day you take a lunch with you to work, and every day it’s the same thing— chicken salad sandwiches. You continually complain to your coworkers that it’s always chicken salad sandwiches in your lunch. You are sick and tired of chicken salad sandwiches. You even tell a coworker you’d rather die than eat one more chicken salad sandwich. Finally, someone asks, ‘Why don’t you ask your wife to make you something else?’ You reply, ‘Oh, actually I make lunch myself.’”

He then says, “That’s the reality for many of us. We end up in the Distant Country living in very difficult circumstances, and we make it sound like it’s someone else’s fault, when in reality, we’ve made our own lunch.”

The truth is as Kyle says, “Projection is much easier than brutal honesty. The problem is that it doesn’t get you out of the pigpen.”


So are you usually taking responsibility or giving out the blame?
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