Welcome to the couples healing podcast where you’ll get the tools for him to overcome his addiction for her to find healing from the pain that it causes her. And for you to heal your relationship and come back together. I hope that you enjoy and subscribe. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode. Today we’re going to be talking about defensiveness. And the reason why I wanted to do this episode is because I’m working with this awesome couple we’ve had, this is our third session today, as soon as we finished the session, I thought I need to hop on, do a podcast episode to share what we did. Because I think this is such a common stumbling block for so many people where there’s defensiveness in the relationship. And when somebody opens up and shares and their partner gets defensive, then it just causes so much difficulty because we’re left feeling alone. Maybe I’ll just share a bit about their situation as far as what we worked on today. So whenever she would open up and talk about her pain, if she was having a hard day or she was feeling anxious or unsettled about something or she was feeling down about just thinking about the past and the hurt that she’d experienced whenever she brought up how she felt. She instantly got her a defensive reaction from her husband. This was so frustrating for her because she wanted to just connect with him, she wanted to just feel validated and feel like her feelings mattered. But she has every couple has a cycle. And one of the first things that I do when I work with a couple is to first I need to understand what their cycle is. And then I need to help them to be clear about what their cycle is to break those patterns to ultimately be able to have the kind of relationship that they want. And the negative cycle pulls them away from each other. So that prevents connection and prevents trust, prevent safety, again, which is why it’s so crucial to do some to do do couples work because you need both people to be able to change the dynamic. And there’s so many cool things that can happen when you’re working together. There’s insights that you can’t get otherwise unless you have the partner in the room. And so I want to share with you what we did. So she talked about how she felt completely alone whenever she brought up how she felt. And that then when he responded in that way, she got the sense that sent her the message that her feelings didn’t matter to him. So as we talked about that, I’m always curious again, this is the benefit of having the other person in the room, I turned to him and say, Hey, so and so what’s happening for you, when she opens up and talks to you about how she feels? Because I don’t want to guess I just want to know directly from him, Hey, what’s going on on the inside for you? How are you processing or internalizing what she’s saying. And whenever I’m working with a couple, I’m always just curious about what the blocks are. And so whenever there’s a block that comes up, right, ultimately, what we want to have happen is her share him respond and reassure or provide comfort or understanding, validate just be there for her. Because that creates a sense of closure. Whenever that thing whenever that kind of thing doesn’t happen, or in any other situation, right? If there’s a block in communication in other areas, or with regard to intimacy, or parenting or connecting on other levels, I’m always curious what’s getting in the way. Because both people have the same goal. They want to have a strong relationship. They want to be happy in their marriage, but something stopping them. And so whenever there’s a defensive reaction, I always want to get to the bottom of why is that happening? And again, no judgment. It’s just a curiosity. I wonder what I wonder how he heard that, that would cause him to react in that way. And so I turned to them turn to him and say, Hey, so what is it that you feel what’s happening for you in the moment that she says, I’m having a really hard day today? And he says, well, whenever I hear her share, I instantly feel like I’m a failure. When she talks about how difficult of a day she’s going through, when she talks about how much pain she’s in, I automatically feel like I’m a failure, and I’m a bad person. And I feel like I’m the one that did this to her.
And whenever I feel like that, the last thing that I want to do is engage in a conversation. Because I feel so awful about the pain that I’ve caused. I don’t want to say anything else that’s going to cause more damage. I’m afraid that if I engage in that conversation, it’s going to make it worse. And when I hear people say that, and that’s such a common response from men, when they get defensive or when they shut down or withdraw, if I always get curious and ask what’s happening for you in the moment. When she approaches and says this. Almost every time they’ll say something like this. I feel like I’ve letting I’ve let her down. I’ve caused so much damage. I don’t want to make it worse. I want to avoid a fight. These discussions rarely end well. Therefore, I’m just going to not engage what they don’t realize. And this is what I shared with him. I said that makes sense to me why you would do that. If that’s your intention to not make it worse than that makes perfect sense why you would not engage however, unintentionally and ironically, what happens is by not engaging, it actually makes it worse because she’s coming to him in an attempt To get her needs met, which in that moment was validation and understanding and support. And so if you haven’t watched or listened to the episode that I did last week, I would encourage you to go back. Because it’s going to make this even make even more sense. There’s a short little video clip that I played, that helps people understand it’s called the still face experiment is in the shownotes. There’s a research study that they did that talked about how crucial connection is, and they demonstrated that in a three minute clip better than I could ever explain it. So if you haven’t listened to that yet, I would go back, I would encourage you to go back, listen to the other episode, or at least watch the video. So you can see what I’m talking about. Because the objective of the conversation isn’t to just transmit information. It’s not an intellectual process. It’s an emotional, it’s an emotional process, where the outcome that she’s hoping for is to get her needs met, and to feel like she matters to him. It isn’t necessarily to share new information. And so when he, when he didn’t respond to that conversation, it left her feeling even more alone, because the reason why she was reaching out in the first place was so she didn’t feel alone in her pain. So is a huge misunderstanding. And it happens all the time. So as you’re listening to this, I would guess that you’ve gone through something similar, where you’re the one who’s either you’re the one who shared and didn’t get the response you were hoping for, or you were the person that heard your partner share, and then you got defensive or shut down or avoided the conversation because you didn’t want it to go poorly. Both. It makes sense to me on both levels, why we do what we do. And so they got stuck in this pattern of not being able to have good conversations, and as a result, their relationship has been deteriorating. And so again, as I say, when I’m working with couples, I’m always curious about Okay, where are things starting to break down? And let’s address it there. And so, the critical thing that we focused on, was we have to shift if you want to cure fail, if you want to cure, you know, I kind of use this title in the in the podcast, if you want to cure defensiveness, you have to first understand where it comes from. defensiveness always comes from a deeper place, where we start to either feel like we’ve failed, like, we’re not good enough. Nothing that we’re doing is working. We feel like, misunderstood. There’s always a deeper reason why somebody gets defensive when we take it wrong. When we internalize what our partner is saying in a wrong way, or in a way that’s not intended, rather than let’s say it that way. If we miss, interpret what our partner is saying, and take it wrong, there’s going to be some kind of a reaction. And so just like I highlighted in this example, he misinterpreted her sharing as I’m failing, and I’m a bad guy. And she’s hurting because I did this to her, therefore, I’m a failure. The belief that he has around failing and being a failure or not being good enough, is paralyzing and it is for so many people. Nobody wants to feel like they’re failing. Nobody wants to feel like they’re not good enough. So he would naturally want to get away from conversations where he felt like that. So how do you cure or what’s the antidote to this problem? It’s not to continue to avoid conversations, it’s to start to see the conversation differently in the first place. And so what I had her doing session was I had her first explain what is going on for her when she doesn’t feel close to him. She says, when we’re not connected, I feel miserable. He’s so important to me, I just want to be in a good place with him. And so I said, Okay, that makes sense. So if you’re feeling miserable, you go to him because you want to start to feel close. And when you feel close to him, and you when you get to resolve the problems that are going on, how do you feel then
she’s like, I feel I feel great, I feel close. And we’re in a good place, I feel secure. And so I said, Okay, that makes sense. The intention of you going to share with him isn’t to rub his face in it. Like he failed, and he’s this bad guy is the opposite. She’s going to him because she values him and wants to connect with him. And when she isn’t able to connect with him, she feels miserable. So she goes to him because he’s important to her. And when I had her share that with him, I said, that’s really important that he hears this directly. Can you tell him directly that you’re going to him and you don’t see him as a failure? That’s not the reason why you’re going you’re going to him because you’re miserable, not feeling close, and you’re trying to create closure about something that affected you. Can you tell him that? She turns tells him that and then after he hears this, he’s like, That’s huge. That is huge. For me, I think it’s gonna make such a big difference knowing this. And she’s like, wait, you didn’t know this before? And he’s like, not really. And they might have had some discussions on the surface about that, but when she was able to share it in such clear terms, and as we spent some time all three of us processing this and I helped him work through some blocks. After she then shared this with them, it completely changed how he saw the situation in the first place. And so I said, Listen, I want to encourage you next time she shares, I want you to try to reflect on this and remember, and try to see it through this lens of she’s sharing with you because of how much you mean to her. She’s sharing with you because she values and feels loved by you. When you guys feel close, so she’s coming to you. And it’s almost like if you think about it in these terms, it’s almost like it’s an honor, when she’s able to approach and open up and share with you. It’s an honor, because it’s an indication of how much you mean to her. And when he said and when it when I said that to him, he’s kind of nodding his head, he’s like, Yes, I will absolutely focus on this, I want to get better at this. I don’t want to get defensive. It’s not that I don’t care about how she feels. I just don’t want to make it worse, and I don’t want to get into a fight. And so as you know, I’m checking in, okay, how does it feel when you know, when you’re hearing her say right now that she’s sharing with you because she misses you, when you guys aren’t connected, and it feels so much better when you’re close? He’s like, this is excellent. This is exactly what I need to hear. And so and so it is for anybody else who’s struggling with this kind of a thing, defensiveness we’ve got, if you want to figure out and solve that you have to get underneath the surface, and uncover why the defensiveness in the first place. He used to take her bringing up what he again, he took it as I’m failing, she won’t get past what’s gone on in the past. She keeps rehashing everything. This is so overwhelming. I don’t know what to do, he would get stuck there. But when she helped him understand that the intention of sharing was to reconnect and create closure, because he was so important to her that instantly changed the frame for him. And I’ve heard this, maybe this is the other thing that maybe the last thing that I’ll share with you is with regard to the session, she says at the very end of session, can I ask you a question? I said, Yeah, she says when I share with him, and he gets defensive again, because it’s muscle memory, right? It’s like if we’re so used to seeing something in a certain way, it can take some conditioning and practice and muscle memory, to really make it effortless. So she said when I share with something with him, and if he gets defensive again, what do I do? And I said, That’s an excellent question. What I would encourage you to do is when you notice him getting defensive, or you’ll notice him spiraling into his shame, I would encourage you to tell him, remind him rather, Honey, I’m opening up to you not because I want you to feel bad, but because I want so much for us to be able to recenter and reconnect together. Because that’s important to me to feel close to you. And I said, Are you willing to do that? She says, absolutely. And I asked him, I said, What would that be like for you, if she reminded you in that moment, you started to feel bad. He said, that would be exactly what I need. Because I don’t want to get defensive, I’m not trying to, I just have felt so bad, I felt like a failure my entire life. That I’m so sensitive to it. So any criticism that I get any possibility of me potentially even failing her, I just start to spiral. So if she were to just reassure me in those two sentences, that would be massive for me. And knowing a bit about her history,
the concern that so many women in her position feel is that, and this is what she shared with me in our first or second session, she said, whenever I share with him, he spirals then I feel like I have to put my feelings on the shelf, and then take care of him. And I can’t keep doing that. And I said I nor should you have to you shouldn’t have to put your feelings on the shelf, you shouldn’t have to not share how you feel for fear of him spiraling. We want to correct that at the core, and simply help him see the situation differently, help him process it differently. And then help him get the tools to be there for you in the way that you need. that’s ultimately what we’re going for that she said, I want that. And so today, I made sure to emphasize that when I asked her to simply remind in that moment when he starts to spiral again, this is the beauty of doing this work together. Both people are on the same team. You want this, they want the same thing. They have the same goals, they want to have a strong marriage and feel connected and have a deeper sense of love. They want that and so working together can most easily achieve that outcome. And so I wanted to clarify with her just I was I want to share with all of you who are listening, that when I encouraged her to go back and share with her husband or rather remind him in that moment that she doesn’t see him as a failure that he that she’s reaching out because she wants to reconnect and solve this problem. That the intention of that is to simply help recenter him to get him into a state to then be able to hear her because the more he sinks into his shame, the less he’s going to be able to sleep toward her, the more alone she’s going to feel, the more it’s going to reinforce this, this narrative that he doesn’t care, which again, is not true, it’s just that he feels so hurt by this. And he’s taking it so personally, that he’s not able to be there for her. And so I said, when I’m asking you to do this, please keep in mind that I don’t want you to put your feelings on the shelf and not come back to them. That’s the difference between what we’re talking about right now. You don’t have to go in and save him from his feelings, make him feel better, and then bottle up what you’re feeling, I don’t want you to do that, what I want you to do, what I encourage you to do is simply help recenter him by sharing those two sentences, reminding him of the intention, why you’re sharing, and then continue to share how you feel, because that’s going to help him recenter. So he can be there for you, and help you and support you and your pain. instead of you having to do the same thing, which is again, put your feelings on the shelf and not come back to them. So all of this made perfect sense to them. And I hope that as I explained this to you, it makes sense to you as well, that if I were to summarize all of what we’ve talked about the goal, when there’s defensiveness is to get underneath that offensiveness. Sometimes I’ll hear people, whether it’s in different like I don’t know, I’m I’m a part of different therapists, Facebook groups, and we talk about different things. And people bring up cases. And sometimes I hear feedback that I just kind of like, Man, that’s, I would not want a couple to hear that feedback. Because sometimes they say, Well, he needs to just man up, he needs to be there. If he did something to hurt our feelings he needs to man up and be there for us doesn’t it doesn’t feel helpful. There’s a reason why he’s reacting the way that he is. And if we don’t know what that reason is, you’re just going to, you’re going to create more gridlock. So again, as I’m working with people, I’m always trying to take a step back and understand why is he doing what he’s doing, there’s a reason for it. And oftentimes, that reason is a misunderstanding or it’s a misguided, it’s a miss, it’s a misunderstanding about how he’s internalizing or interpreting a situation. So let’s figure out how he’s seeing it, and then change the way that he’s seeing it. So that when she shares, he can be 100% present, he doesn’t have to feel bad about himself, because I don’t want that. That doesn’t benefit anybody when he feels bad about himself. It’s so important that couples have conversations, if the wife is feeling betrayal, or hurt or feeling alone, it’s crucial that she is able to talk to her husband about that. But if he’s not able to hear it, and be present, and not feel bad about himself, those conversations can happen. You can’t heal, you can’t move forward unless we get those blocks out of the way. And so just to summarize all this, whenever there’s defensiveness, it simply means that a nerve was struck. And we just want to understand what was how did they hear what just happened? How do they internalize that? How do they interpret that. And once we’re clear about that item, whatever that is, for him, the client that I was just working with, it was a sense of failure, then we have the feedback, we need to solve that problem.
We help get the understanding, we help change his frame or lens through which he sees that situation. It’s not failure. It’s, she misses you, and she needs you because you’re important to her. As soon as he sees it through that lens, which is the truth instantly, that that shift can help them be present with her. So I would encourage you all, as you’re, as you’re listening to this, I would encourage you to go back to your partner, if you’re the one, if you’re the wife who’s sharing, and your husband gets defensive, I would encourage you to have a conversation with him and get curious, outside of the moment, go to him and say, Hey, sometimes when we share, I’m just I want to share with you just as I, as I’ve reflected on things as I listen to this podcast, this podcast episode, or if you even share this with him. So you guys are on the same page, I would encourage you to go to him and say, Hey, sometimes when I share, I noticed that there’s immediately the energy changes. And sometimes you’ll get defensive and sometimes we end up fighting. Can you help me understand? How do you take it when I open up and tell you about something that I’m struggling with? How do you hear that? And then that gives him a space to be able to share with you well, I just feel like I failed again. Or I feel like I haven’t done a good job. I’ve been trying so hard. And we’re still stuck in this place. Or rather, he might say, Hey, this is another client that I’ve worked with where he says I thought we were in a really good place. I’ve been trying really hard. I’ve been really focused on trying to be there for her. So when she comes to me and says that she’s hurting, I get it instantly I get discouraged. Because I think I thought we were doing so well. And just by him being able to open up and share that with you. You can then clarify and say oh no, we actually are doing well. I just had something that came up that I wanted to talk to you about but I’m really happy about the progress that we’re making. That helps to change the frame. So that the disconnection doesn’t continue to happen. So if you’re the wife, I would encourage you to have that conversation with him and get curious to understand why he’s reacting in that way. If you’re the husband, I would encourage you to share with your wife and say and tell her why what’s happening on the inside? How do you internalize these things? How do you take this on? How do you see it that causes this reaction. And the more you can have these open conversations with one another, this is the path to healing. And so it’s like, it’s so awesome for me to be able to work with couples in such a short amount of time, teach them these skills, help them process any other blocks that come up, because this is just one. This is one approach. This is just one way to resolve these feelings of failure, defensiveness, there are many other ways to do this. But there’s one that I want to at least share with you guys. When couples are able to implement these tools, and then as other blocks come up, get those blocks resolved. It truly does create a path to healing so that the pain of this difficult situation can actually be left in the past. And you can have closure around it, instead of feeling like you’re ignoring it and moving forward without resolving it. So I hope this helps. I would love to hear how this goes for you guys. And if this has been helpful, I’d love your feedback. Again, it’s it’s super, super helpful to have people review and share some feedback so other people can find the podcast. So I’d really appreciate it if you’d be willing to do such a thing. And I look forward to seeing you guys on the next episode. We’ll talk to you soon. Wait before you go, I’m offering free access for my podcast listeners to a course I created. So make sure you go to couples healing.org so you can get some tools to start the healing process individually and in your relationship. Or if you want even more support and you’d like to work with me directly.
You can contact me with the info that’s on that website as well. I’m excited for you to make progress on your journey.