What Is Blame-Shifting?

Key Takeaways:

1. Blame-Shifting is a Manipulation Tactic: Abusers deflect responsibility by making the survivor feel at fault for their actions, leading to confusion, self-blame and even efforts to "fix" the relationship.
2. Blame-Shifting Overlaps with Other Abuse Tactics: It often includes gaslighting, projection and coercive control, making the survivor question their reality while the abuser avoids accountability.
3. Breaking Free Requires Outside Perspective: Seeking support from a domestic violence advocate, therapist or trusted loved one can help survivors recognize patterns of abuse and regain clarity.

Blame-shifting is when someone redirects the responsibility for their actions onto someone else. It’s a tactic abusers use to deflect from the truth—they’re not the problem, they insist; their partner is. After a while, this blame-shifting starts to feel like brainwashing. The survivor begins to question what role they play in the abuse. 

Is it really my fault?

Am I the one making him mad?

Do I need to just be a better partner for this to stop?

The attention is taken off of the abuser’s actions and redirected to the survivor and what she needs to do better. Some survivors have even reported entering therapy in order to figure out how they can end the abuse their partner is inflicting. 

What Does Blame-Shifting Sound Like?

Here are some examples of how blame-shifting might show up in a relationship with an abusive partner and the way it can overlap with other tactics of abuse.

Abuser: You make me so angry I can’t control myself!
The abuser is blaming their emotions and their reaction to those emotions on the survivor in order to avoid responsibility and also justify why they’re being abusive. Remember, not all angry people hurt their partners. 

Abuser: You’re constantly bad-mouthing me to your family. That’s why they want you to leave me. They’re just trying to tear us apart.
The abuser is not only blame-shifting here, but also gaslighting the survivor by rewriting her reality. The survivor’s family likely doesn’t want the abuser in the survivor’s life because of his abuse, not because of anything the survivor did. The abuser is also using an us-against-them mentality to try and isolate the survivor. Many abusers try to position their relationship as something no one else could possibly understand in order to keep the survivor from trusting an outsider’s perspective, like when a concerned family member tries to intervene.

Abuser: You’re so sensitive. You have to stop taking everything so personally. 
While the abuser once again blames the survivor for her reaction to his abuse, he’s also minimizing his actions. Abusers are known to do this frequently—they’ll tear down a partner by calling her “crazy”, and then say they were “just joking.” They’ll threaten to hurt a family pet and then laugh at the survivor as she panics. Make no mistake, these are all just facets of testing out how much power and control the abuser can wield. 

Abuser: Who were just texting? Is it another man? You’re cheating on me, aren’t you? I always knew you would.
Abusers may use blame-shifting as a way to project onto the survivor something the abuser is guilty of doing, such as cheating on a partner. Infidelity can be one of the signs of a narcissistic abuser, who feels entitled to cheat because of their inflated ego. However, abusers of all types use infidelity as yet another way to torture and belittle their partner. In any case, these accusations may result in the survivor blaming herself because her partner doesn’t trust her. She may begin to let her abusive partner monitor her phone, computer and where she goes in order to prove her loyalty. This can quickly devolve into coercive control, where an abuser limits a survivor’s freedom by dominating every area of a survivor’s life. 

Abuser: I wasn’t depressed until you came along. You make me feel like I’m never good enough. I think you do it just to torture me.
This sounds like something the survivor should say, but when it’s the person causing harm in the relationship blaming the survivor, it’s a type of emotional abuse. The abuser is shifting blame for his mental state onto the survivor, justifying his abuse because he’s convinced himself that it’s the survivor’s responsibility to control his moods. 

Abuser to Police: She attacked me! Look at this scratch on my face! I was just trying to get her to calm down and she went crazy. 
Ah, the ol’ “she’s crazy” defense again. Abusers love this one. In this case, the abuser is playing the victim to the police after the survivor reacted to abuse inflicted by her partner. This is something called DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. The abuser denies he played any part in the incident, he attacks the survivor’s credibility (she can’t be trusted because she’s “crazy”) and then the abuser makes sure to position himself as the victim. 

A real-life example of this happened in Arizona in 2022 when Tyesha Wayne was arrested for domestic violence after police responded to her home. Wayne had just regained consciousness after her boyfriend, Daniel Walker, strangled her during an argument.

Walker told a different story. He said he had put Wayne in a “chokehold” to “calm her down.” Even though Walker had strangled Wayne for long enough that she lost control of her bladder—a vital piece of evidence she showed police—law enforcement reported they saw no visible bruises on Wayne and ended up arresting Wayne as the primary aggressor. 

Nine months later, Wayne says Walker attacked her again, this time in their garage. Fearing for her life, she grabbed a nearby gun and shot Walker, killing him. She was arrested for murder, but the charges were later dropped.  

Abusers will use blame-shifting when police are present to avoid being arrested. All too often, it’s successful and the abuse continues after police leave.

Avoiding the Brainwashing of Blame-Shifting

While it’s often not possible to simply point out to an abusive partner that they’re skirting the blame for all of their poor choices, at which point they magically stop, it is possible for survivors to protect themselves. After being subjected to continued blame-shifting, survivors may notice they’re doing several things:

• Blaming themselves for their partner’s abuse
• Questioning their memories of events
• Minimizing their partner’s abuse to others
• Striving to “be a better partner” even as they’re being abused

The best way to break oneself of this type of brainwashing is to seek an outside perspective on what’s actually going on. This could look like calling a domestic violence advocate and discussing the relationship, asking for their opinion on whether or not it’s abusive or healthy. It could look like talking to a therapist trained in domestic violence. Or it could be confiding in a trusted friend or family member.

It may also look like journaling the events in order to spot a pattern. Are these fights instigated by the survivor or her partner? Who is getting belittled, threatened or hurt physically? Does it still make sense that it’s the survivor’s fault or is really the partner’s doing. (Just make sure to keep the journal somewhere that the abuser won’t be able to locate it and use it against the survivor.)

Abuse can be difficult to spot at first. A survivor shouldn’t blame herself for missing the red flags or early signs of control. No matter when a survivor recognizes she’s being abused, it’s never too late to get help and get out.