John Gottman’s research has helped him to identify what he calls “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” in relationships. These refer to four behaviors in a relationship that ultimately spell doom and that the end is near in one’s relationship. These four behaviors are criticism, contempt, stonewalling, and defensiveness.
Defensiveness occurs when one partner starts resisting what their partner is saying. They often exhibit different ways of not “accepting” their partner’s concerns. Sometimes people don’t always understand defensiveness. When we try to explain the “facts” of a situation in response to our partner, we are basically resisting their message of concern. In reality, this is actually defensive behavior, yet many people do not realize that this type of reaction is problematic.
What is Defensiveness?
Essentially, defensiveness is not accepting the concerns of your partner. It can be helpful to think of this visually, in the context of paint. Defensiveness occurs when we feel attacked by our partner and fight back without ever truly hearing their concern. That feeling of being attacked covers them completely from head to toe in red paint. It may not be intentional, but the defensive partner will shake off that red paint at all costs and not accept it.
This response presents a stark contrast to truly listening to your partner and understanding their perspective. Instead, they push back and resist. In essence, when we are defensive we are basically saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong because of A, B or C.” Thus, at times we’ll launch a counter-attack against our partner. Other times we’ll clarify our perception of the facts regarding the situation in order to resist our partner’s original concern. That too is, in essence, defensiveness.
Why Does Defensiveness Occur?
Often being defensive is a response to our partner pointing out something that we do not like about ourselves. Everyone has traits or characteristics about themselves that they would rather not acknowledge. For example:
- forgetfulness
- laziness
- indifference
- hurtful
It can be hard to be open up to others about such shortcomings. Why? Because these qualities bring up a powerful emotion: shame. Instead, we push back and try to change the narrative. We would rather portray ourselves in a rosier way than what is often the reality.
Examples of Defensiveness
Let’s look at two examples of defensiveness.
Example 1: One partner asks the other, “Where is the dry cleaning? You said you would pick it up today.” The other partner responds by saying how horrendous and difficult their day has been.
Then they defensively reply: “Why didn’t you just pick it up yourself?”
Example 2: The first partner says, “I’m frustrated you came home late last night. You said we could spend time together before bed.”
The defensive response: “I was having a good time with friends, what’s the problem?”
In both examples, the defensive person does not accept their partner’s concerns or even take time to consider them. Most likely this is an issue that comes up repeatedly and only creates more conflict in the relationship.
How to Solve Defensiveness
So what is the antidote to defensiveness? Consider these five steps:
Step 1: Listen and understand your partner’s perspective fully.
Step 2: Restate their concern. It is enormously helpful if you can paraphrase the gist of your partner’s concern.
Step 3: Take ownership and accept responsibility. This is a very big step towards creating understanding.
Step 4: Apologize and be sincere. It is much easier to do so when you’re seeing the situation through their eyes. However, if your apology is not sincere it’s probably better not to apologize at all.
Step 5: Offer a potential solution. Suggest possible ways to solve this issue if it is likely to arise again in the future.
If you still stumble and are unable to prevent defensiveness from creeping into your relationship, it’s possible that you and your partner have past issues that need to be worked through. If that’s the case, it would then be important to go to couples counseling to address these issues and get back on track.