What are your biggest responsibilities to others? Under what circumstances would you put those responsibilities in a lower priority? (Please read details).

My daughter is raised, I am divorced the last 8 years and my only respnsibilities are to myself and my animals.

It’s a good place to be and I am lovin’ it!

I paid my dues, and now it’s MY time! ;-)

For this question… the judge .. one has to be impartial and have the work above other things so the responsibility to the law is higher. Though a lot recuse when others think they wouldn’t be impartial.

There are certain circumstances where my sense of responsibility would be conflicted. For instance, if the government wanted me to testify against my brother for drug possession, I would refuse. However if I was in the car when my brother insisted on driving and was drunk when he hit a pedestrian, I would testify against him; no problem at all.

The point is that there are limits to our responsibility to others or possibly the degree of responsibility can change according to circumstance. There would be a greater responsibility toward the pedestrian than to my brother.

Once upon a time I was married and was a stay-at-home mom to three young boys. The way I saw it I had a responsibility to stay with the man with whom I had created these children. I believed it was my obligation to stay in a marriage that did not feed me emotionally, intellectually, sexually, etc. because I let this man impregnate me. Being married to him I felt as if I was living in a straight-jacket with no chance of escape. But I had stuck it out with this guy for 21 years and figured it was as good as it got. Then all the boys were in school and it was time for me to begin thinking about myself. I went back to school, began to understand that I was not the woman I wanted to be and was not being true to myself or my destiny. That’s when I turned my life upside down by ending my marriage. It has been a pretty challenging trip as I have slowly divested myself of all of the material things that went with my previous life. At this point all I have left of that woman are the children I carried and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I would say that putting myself and my own needs above my perceived responsibility to my ex-husband was the smartest decision I ever made. I love my children and I know that I am a better mother because I am a happier, more fulfilled woman. I do not spend anywhere near the amount of time living in my head as I once did. I live my life for real with the most amazing husband on the planet and three pretty cool kids.

In the end though it turned out that I traded those old responsibilities for new ones. I have at least as much on my plate now as I did before. The thing is that these are responsibilities I chose for myself and it is truly an honor and gift to help my husband and to raise these boys. I love all of my new responsibilities and would not trade a single minute.

As for how the experiences of my childhood might have effected my choices, it is hard to say. My father loved my mother through thick and thin and was there with her as she suffered and eventually died. A pretty awesome example it you ask me. After she died however, he all but abandoned all of his obligations to us children (six of us ages 2 to 15 at the time), and has never looked back. I have no idea what he gained by doing that but looking at him now I think he regrets having made that choice.

Sometimes, circumstances take an unexpected turn. When my son left his wife and three kids, he thought he would get a job and support them, but it never worked out that way. He didn’t intentionally become a “deadbeat” dad, but it just happened.

With many people, it is possible to balance both, but we don’t always have the kind of choices we wish we had.

You ask such difficult questions @Wundayatta :-).

I think it comes down to conscience, conditioning and a million other things, coping mechanisms for instance. I do think these ideas are pretty much generalisations though because there are certainly situations where none of the following applies.

I have very strong morals and ethics. I would find it morally wrong to walk away from my children for instance. I brought them into this world, they are my responsibility. It would be morally wrong to me to leave them (and I love them absolutely). My ex on the other hand has walked away from this responsibility. I wonder though, whether that choice was influenced because he knew I WOULD do the right thing. Had I been irresponsible, would he have left them uncared for? I don’t know the answer to that. My conscience would never have let me leave them though. I could not have lived with that decision. Perhaps he knew he didn’t have the capacity to look after them or perhaps he didn’t have the capacity to put his own life on hold to take care of them?

Conditioning, My father put his children first after my mother died. He was told to put us in a home (this was pre-social welfare as it exists now and child care availability). He looked after us and found ways to manage the situation. My ex husband’s mother left her first husband and two young children to marry my ex husband’s father, her second husband. So, there was a precedent for him that said, it is okay to walk away and leave someone else to take care of your children.

Maturity and coping mechanisms. My ex was never very good at finding solutions and coping with problems. His usual response was to bury his head in the sand and hope things got better. I don’t think he intended to walk away from his children, it probably just seemed like the best option FOR HIM at that moment and the easiest way to solve the problems he had. I would think he justified his decision by telling himself he was doing the right thing for his children. I think he is good at compartmentalising his problems. I also suspect he will have convinced himself that his decision was my fault. He doesn’t take responsibility for his own actions historically. Some people always place the blame for their actions elsewhere and I suspect people who walk away from their responsibilities are likely to have this ability. Again, conscience. My conscience would force me to say, this is my fault, I have to fix it. He would say, this is your fault, you fix it.

And then there will be a million other situations too. Good question. Not sure my answer helps demystify this quandary at all though.

My thought is a childhood that they never knew they were loved. Never heard it and only wanted to escape from the environment.
To me that would set the stage for escape and fleeing as an adult. They come across some hardship or something they think is better and simply drop and flee it and forget about it.
Other reasons may be that they really are in an oppressive situation and simply need to escape to find themself again.
In each case, they are not even considering the responsibility. To me that lack of sticking with responsibility can come from so many things. The one however that bubbles to the top for me would be a childhood where they simply had no say or was raised in an environment of little mutual respect.

I am responsible for the roof over my mother’s head. There was a time I chose to leave her and go off with a man across country, intending to go to work and keep up my support but also gambling there was a chance I might let her down, I chose to gamble and it turned out badly.

Nowadays I won’t gamble our security for my own wants. When I fell in love a few years back with my now fiancee and he asked me to live with him, to make a home with him then I told him I was first obligated to support my mother to some extent and would not be able to stand on equal ground with him as far as finances and sharing went. I gambled he might let me go but instead we all moved together into a lovely home.

My biggest responsibilities are to my children. They are the only ones that weren’t willingly put into a relationship with me. I will always do what is best for me AND for them – that is, they’re not more important than me and I’m not more important than them. When I was leaving my ex-husband and my oldest was a little baby, my ex would try to guiltrip me into staying by saying I’m breaking up a family. I knew, however, that our family would never be the kind of family I envisioned for my children and left anyhow. If my kids were adults and I somehow lost respect for them, that’s when I would put myself above them.

When we accept responsibility for someone or something, we are agreeing to sublimate our own needs for theirs.

When it is thrust upon us, or the circumstances turn out to be different than we expected, it is time to re-evaluate our response.