How to Not be Defensive with Your Relationship Partner
Defensiveness is among the most common and damaging forms of toxic communication patterns.
One of the biggest barriers to repair and connection in relationships is when one or both partners resort to defensiveness when the other tries to communicate a problem they are having.
Defensiveness is among the most common and damaging forms of invalidation—which routinely happens in our day-to-day conversations when we’re not mindful and careful about avoiding it.
I’m not saying our intention is to invalidate others’ experiences. Generally, we just disagree with them, and in adult relationships, we should be able to disagree with others without destroying our relationships with them. I am saying invalidation is the unintentional byproduct of the conversation.
In my experience, the most defensive people are very nice, very smart, very well-intentioned people. They are people who NEVER sit around plotting strategies to inflict pain and suffering on others.
When your default setting is trying to be a good person—someone who is kind, nice, warm, charitable, generous, friendly, etc.—and THEN someone you love a lot and who you feel like you have sacrificed and will continue to sacrifice so much for sounds like they’re complaining about you or criticizing you or blaming you for something that you might not have even realized was happening, the most normal response in the world is coming to your own defense.
I get it. I’m AWESOME at being defensive. You know what else I am? A huge threat to invalidate people’s experiences when I’m not mindfully and emotionally disciplined about NOT doing so.
Invalidation has always, and will always, erode trust in relationships. Defensiveness might be the most dangerous form of invalidation because of how innocent and understandable it seems to us prone to it.
Intention Does Not Equal Experience – How Invalidation Destroys Love and Trust
The fabulous Australian speaker, author, and coach Remi Pearson said it best and most succinctly: “Intention does NOT equal experience.”
Meaning, what my intentions are do not always line up nicely with someone else’s experience.
I like to use food allergies as an example when discussing this.
Peanuts, to me, are a delicious bar snack or something to enjoy at a baseball game. My opinion of and experience with peanuts is generally positive, though let’s be clear that I rarely think about them at all. They’re largely inconsequential to me.
While sitting at a baseball game or walking into some dimly lit mom-and-pop pub somewhere, I would barely register peanuts sitting out, or someone eating them.
Compare that with someone who happens to be deathly allergic to them.
If ingesting a peanut, inhaling peanut shell dust, or if the residue on someone’s hands after eating them is poisonous and potentially fatal to you, imagine the discomfort of sitting next to someone at a ball game, or walking into a business in which peanuts are everywhere, and all the people are blissfully ignorant and comfortably unconcerned about jeopardizing your health.
One response to that might be: Sorry about your luck! Maybe don’t go to places that have peanuts everywhere with your hypersensitive immune and digestive systems!
And that’s fine. Maybe a little dickish. But fine.
But the bottom line from a relational standpoint is that your partner (or pretty much anyone under the assumption that you care about them the tiniest bit) must be able to trust you to be mindful about how peanuts affect them, even if you are not affected by them in the same way.
If we can’t be trusted to do that, the threat of them getting sick or dying because of your snacking preferences increases exponentially. But from an emotional pain standpoint it may feel like: I can’t even trust them to not do things that might kill me! Do they want me dead?! Or did they just forget? Either way—I can’t feel safe or trust them as much anymore.
Pile up enough instances like that in your relationships, and you won’t actually have a relationship with them anymore because they will sensibly want to distance themselves from you.
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And what self-centered, ignorant people do (like me for the first 30 years of my life) is think to themselves: Wait a minute. I’ve eaten peanuts hundreds of times. They’re so good. I don’t get sick. And think about it! They’re in all kinds of awesome things like peanut butter and Snickers bars and ice cream sundaes. I see all of these people at this ballgame and the pub eating peanuts, and none of them are getting sick or making a big deal about it. So what the hell is my partner’s problem?
If you never had a frame of reference for the idea that peanuts can literally sicken or kill someone, you’d just assume the other person was freaking out about something they shouldn’t worry about, and you’d probably say so. Not even to be a jerk about it. You’d just tell them peanuts are good and that they don’t poison people and that they should calm down about it.
You wouldn’t be intending harm. You wouldn’t be intending cruelty.
But—whether or not you realized it—you’d be invalidating them. Trust erosion and emotional damage ensues. And this is the pattern that routinely destroys relationships. It just tends to be hidden in the less tangible conversations around how someone feels in certain situations, or about toilet seats being left up, or about about not being on time for things, or about someone leaving a dish by the sink.
The Mindset That Helped Me Overcome My Defensive Tendencies
To be clear, my defensive tendencies remain. It’s like I’m wired for it. I’m still a threat to defend myself and my intentions and all of that.
The biggest difference between me 15 years ago and me today, is that I notice. I’m self-aware. I don’t double and triple down on defending myself when someone is trying to communicate that what I’ve done or am doing might be hurting them somehow in a way I hadn’t considered or recognized.
I eventually came to an important realization which completely transformed my defensive tendencies, and which I believe anyone can incorporate into their life.
I realized my defensiveness was rooted in a few beliefs I have about myself.
I’m a good person.
I care about others—especially my relationship partner and/or children and/or friends and family.
I am never intending to cause harm or hurt anyone.
Therefore, anyone suggesting I’ve done something bad to them is mistaken or missing some context about me.
Eventually, the answer to the riddle became clear to me.
IF I’m actually a good person, and IF I’m never actually trying to do anything wrong or hurt anyone, then that means I’m not bad, and didn’t do anything bad.
And if I’m not bad and didn’t do anything bad, that means there’s nothing to defend. Thus, I need not be defensive.
When someone is telling us something is wrong, or that they’re experiencing pain of some kind because of something we’ve done (or something we failed to do), it’s not about us. It’s about them.
And if I’m going to be someone trustworthy in life and relationships, I must be someone people can trust to come tell that something bad happened to them—that something is wrong.
If I’m not bad and I didn’t do anything bad, how else am I ever supposed to know? I’ll spend my entire life in blissful ignorance while people I care about are experiencing something bad for them, and I’m behaving as if nothing is wrong with that.
The only alternative is for them to be able to tell me about whatever is wrong.
And my response cannot be some version of: “Since I didn’t do anything bad, stop blaming me for your feelings. That’s YOUR problem. Now I feel unfairly attacked and misunderstood, and instead of demonstrating care about the bad thing that you’re going through, I’m going to make this entirely about me and leave you to feel shitty alone.”
As I see it, I’m a threat to hurt people in my blind spots. Not by doing anything “bad.” But simply by not always noticing that someone else can be afraid of peanuts even though they seem pretty non-threatening to me.
And if I want to have relationships full of trust and connection, rather than conflict and shittery, others need to be able to trust me to receive information from them that educates me about their totally divergent experiences and thoughts and feelings from my own.
It’s okay to later explain how accidental and unintentional the incident was. But let’s first lead with love.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you. For us to have a healthy relationship, you have to be able to trust me to remember and think about how you’re affected by things I do and don’t do. I’ll make every effort to make sure this doesn’t happen to you again. I never want to do something that hurts you so thank you for letting me know about this.”
Intention does not equal experience.
We must demonstrate care about the painful or negative things happening to the people we care about, and if we’re in a position to protect them from the painful and negative things, we should.
Even when the painful and negative things are a direct result of something we’ve done.
Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.
P.S. - I know these things can present really small to some of you in your busy lives and marriages/partnerships. But that’s exactly why developing mindfulness and communication habits around these domestic scenarios is so critical to maintaining peaceful, loving relationships. If you have trust erosion, and/or pain points and frustrations around things like this at home, consider working with me as your relationship coach to develop these skills and habits. This stuff matters. Book your next appointment here. - MF
Matthew: I believe you and I are cyberspace soulmates! Your writing always hits home for me. Intimate relationships can be so hard to maintain. There are times I wonder if it's worth it and have wanted to walk away from my marriage of 10 years. You always manage to make me see how I can improve MYSELF to help our connection. On a side note: I'm a music lover and try to relate songs to a situation - after reading your post, the song "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" - by the Monkees (Neil Diamond) came to mind. After all, lyrics are just poetry - that you sing. Always, thank you for your insight! Julie
But how does one suppress a defensiveness that is a result of invalidation? I got so sick of losing arguments about how I think, that any last straggles of defensiveness are for self-preservation and identity at this point.