What Is Accountability In A Relationship?

Where Did I Get My Definition of Accountability?

Someone sent me a dm asking me about accountability.

They were saying that it was so much pressure to try and prevent someone else from doing something that they should not be doing. I completely agree. We can barely control ourselves much less other people!

So then it leads me to the question of, who told you that you were the one that had to discourage or prevent this other person from doing wrong or sinning?

I know for me it was a combination of my Korean culture, my American culture, and also the Christian Church.

Other than telling me to be a good role model for my younger sisters, my parents did not raise me to feel like I was responsible for my siblings. But, within the Korean culture, there is an expectation that the oldest child is responsible for all of their younger siblings. My parents never said a word to me, nor did they ever punish me or anything like that, but becoming a latchkey kid at such a young age with my younger siblings, definitely made me think I was responsible for them. But I know that I had it much easier than many other Korean-American peers. I know many of them were physically beaten and abused for their younger siblings’ mistakes or actions.

And the other part would be a combination of American culture mixed with the Christian church. As a kid in the 80s, I was a huge reader and so I absorbed everything. I was exposed to a lot more adult news than I should have been. I always took notice of the victim-blaming. And I wanted to learn what I could do to not be hurt in the way that the victims were. Back then, victim-blaming wasn’t even a concept, so blaming victims was very common and very open. This made me think that there was something I could do that would “incite” someone to hurt me and do something they wouldn’t normally do.

Then there is the Christian Church.

For me, I don’t remember anyone giving a sermon or a lecture on the exact definition of what the word “accountability” means. But, through the things said, preached on, taught, accountability held the meaning that if there is a person who is struggling, or has committed a sin, they would have an “accountability partner” and this person was supposed to help them through their struggles and hold them “accountable”.

Now looking back as an adult…what in the world does this even mean?!!

Like was that accountability partner supposed to follow you around like the Holy Spirit? Are they supposed to call and visit every day? Like how exactly does that work given the human condition? If you are a Christian, doesn’t having the Holy Spirit already mean you have an accountability partner?!

I never really understood it that much and didn’t give it much thought because when you’re a teenager, it sounds good enough. Sure, if I had someone ask me every day if I was doing something bad, it might make me behave better.

But by the time I got to college and began to hear more “grown up” messages and our groups and talks got more adult content, the topics of wrong-doing, sin, and accountability was always there.

Maybe it’s because I’m the firstborn. Maybe it’s because I took on alot of responsibility from a young age which I pretty quickly figured out I didn’t want. And therefore, I worked on getting rid of responsibility that wasn’t mine. As I grew older, I also learned the term “enabler” and took that to heart. I spent lots of time studying and figuring out the boundaries of enabling and what that looked like in relationships.

What I thought (and still think) was some of the worst offenders of pushing a toxic version of accountability was secular self-help books, and Christian marriage books. With the secular self-help books, they are constantly pushing this idea that how you say things, how you share things can cause problems for another person and are not good communication skills, which can lead to problems and conflict.

There is so much in the helping fields where we would like to place responsibility and blame on something outside of a person in an effort to make the person feel less shame/guilt or help them to carry the load of their struggles, but it does not work like this.

Of course, it’s so helpful when we can learn the patterns and roots that contributed to us being the way we are. I think it’s like how people just love to hear family history and stories. We all want to know about where we came from and talking about and learning about generational trauma and how that has fed into our history is so beneficial.

But after a while it’s just all talk.

Then, there are the Christian books! The worst are the marriage and parenting books! And let’s not even get started with the unhinged, off-the-wall things God’s people can and do say!

Can a spouse be blamed if their spouse cheats on them? Is it the husband’s fault that his wife cheated because he wasn’t home enough? Is the wife’s fault that her husband cheated because she didn’t have enough sex with him?

As a young person, nothing about this blame game ever sat right with me. I just refused to accept it. Now, as an old person, I know for certain that it is a blame game and it’s wrong. Every single person is responsible for themselves. And honestly, you have to be responsible for yourself if you want to survive in this life. There really is no other way. Life gets difficult and hard if you actually believe that someone else is responsible for your struggles.

What Accountability Actually Is

In my preparation for writing this post, I decided to finally look up what the word “accountability” actually meant. What was the definition? I found a definition that was so much more promising and appealing than I had thought.

The definition of accountability is:

“the fact of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it, or the degree to which this happens”.

and

“A situation in which someone is responsible for the things that happened and can give a satisfactory reason for them”  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/accountability

And then my most favorite definition of accountability comes from the business world.

In business, accountability is “an acceptance of responsibility for honest and ethical conduct towards others.”  https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/accountability.asp

Doesn’t that sound amazing? “an acceptance of responsibility for honest and ethical conduct towards others”!!

My husband is in corporate America and I asked him about it and he said that in the business world, a company is fully responsible for presenting to investors everything they are doing so that the investors can have faith in them which will lead to them giving them money. The company is the one who has to go hire audit firms (that’s what my husband used to do), pay to have everything scrutinized, write up reports, etc. The company has to do this! Not the investors!

Could you imagine if we were to take these definitions and apply it to our relationships?

Accountability means that the offender is going to do everything in their power to help heal the hurt and save the relationship. They are going to draw up a plan and present it to the offended in an effort to show that they are honest and ethical. That the offender is taking responsibility for the things that happened. The offender is going to draw up a plan as to how they are going to be and do better.

That the offender is taking the full responsibility of what they’ve done and will put in the work themselves and not expect others to shoulder responsibility for their actions.

This is the way it’s supposed to be.

This is accountability.