What Being Accountable for Other People's Feelings Does and Does Not Mean
Hey folks, I know I haven’t done any writing on the subject of emotional care and patriarchy lately, which is largely because my fellow Substackers do such a good job of it and they say a lot of the things I want to say.
But there’s one area wherein I find a lot of people — not just men, but everyone — who have issues with emotions seems to really struggle. This is what it means to be accountable for other people’s feelings.
As such, I wanted to shoot this quick article out because I think this is really important stuff and needs to be said.
What “accountability” actually means…
Being accountable for something essentially means that you have a willingness to accept responsibility for something. In this case, we’re talking about other people’s feelings.
This seems to be an extremely problematic concept for most people to grasp. In my life, I have come across a truly wild collection of reasons that I’ve been dismissed by partners or friends when I confront them about having done or said something that felt hurtful, and pretty much all of them completely miss the point.
It’s almost as if being asked for accountability immediately invokes other accusations that nobody is speaking or thinking, which is, to me, a strange thing. So I just want to clear some things up for people out there…
What being accountable for someone’s feelings DOES NOT mean…
Accepting accountability for someone else’s feelings does not inherently mean the following:
That you are at fault of anything
That your character is under attack
That you are a bad person
That someone is trying to shame, punish, or control you
That you are solely to blame
That your intentions are more meaningful than their impact
That the other person is being irrational because they’re emotional
That feedback is inherently hostile or a threat to you
That you have to agree in order to care
That you are obligated to “fix” their feelings
That your discomfort is more valid than their experience
That being misunderstood is worse than the harm it causes
That the only options are complete guilt or complete innocence
That listening means “losing”
That being wrong makes you unworthy
What being accountable for someone’s feelings DOES mean…
Accepting accountability for other people’s emotions does, however, mean that you:
Understand that the way you exist in this world has an effect on others and that effect might not always be positive, regardless of your intent
That’s it. That’s literally all people are asking of you when they want you to be accountable for their feelings.
So often, I face situations where I tell someone something along the lines of “Hey, maybe I’m not super okay with this,” and I’m given a lengthy monologue about how I’ve misunderstood that person’s intentions. It doesn’t matter what that person did to make me misunderstand their intentions, but it’s clearly my fault all the time, and if I just stopped being so sensitive, I wouldn’t have these problems.
Or, the person who needs to be accountable then goes into a spiral and after hurting their feelings, I need to take care of them, because they’re feeling bad about themselves.
People make mistakes. People have misunderstandings. People don’t always portray themselves perfectly. These things happen, and sometimes feelings get hurt. This is completely normal. The important thing is empathy, that you can see someone else hurting because of you and say sorry for that happening — even if it was by accident — without making it all about you.
It’s not about what you say, but how you deal with the consequences…
This is my #1 rule that I tell anyone who meets me. We’re all human. We’re silly, impulsive, and reactive. We word things poorly, we misunderstand one another, and we’re not always at our best.
THIS IS NORMAL!
So rather than getting butthurt about what people say to me, I make it simple. There are only a few things in this life that I’m not willing to forgive, which include fucking with me, my loved ones, or pets, or ruining my potential to survive the future.
Unless you do any of those things, there’s a pretty good chance that we can talk through any issue.
Being accountable doesn’t need to be the end of the world and it doesn’t give away any piece of yourself that’s going to kill you. All it means is that you have an ability to recognize that something you said might have hit someone the wrong way and caused an unfortunate reaction. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you even need to change in the future, but the hope is that ideally, if you’re a nice person, you’ll be aware of that in the future and try not to do it again.
Empathy is really not that hard if you put in an effort. It’s just recognizing that other people have feelings too. We don’t need to walk on eggshells, but basic respect for one another isn’t the worst thing to build our world on.
Stay balanced, my friends ❤️🐻
Note from the Author: If you enjoyed this article, perhaps you might enjoy reading life stories set in a fictional world where accountability is a core cultural value. If that sounds interesting, please check out my novella series, The Vitmar Chronicles… a slice-of-life coming-of-age series that follows two brothers as they navigate life’s ups and downs.
Read the free sample here — Learn about the series here — Find it on Amazon (EU link, but you can find it in all countries), Google, Kobo, and the Draft2Digital Network! Volume II is out now!
