by: E.B. Johnson
Is your relationship fraught with hardship? Do serious conversations end in emotional explosions? Do you struggle to be open with your partner? Or to get them to open up with you? When we don’t consciously rid ourselves of our destructive and defensive behaviors, they undermine our happiness and the quality of our partnerships. If you want to find better and more effective ways to connect and enrich your love, then you have kick these defensive behaviors to the curb.
What our defensive behaviors look like.
Do you react defensively whenever things get challenging? What about your partner? While we all might engage in defensive patterns a bit differently, the core of our evasion is the same. We shift responsibility and focus on the bad, instead of stepping up to the plate and doing the hard emotional work it takes to make a relationship work.
Looking for negativity
People in defensive mode tend to be incredibly negative. They focus on the bad — especially in others — in order to detract from their own perceived insecurities or mistakes. If they feel like they’re getting something wrong (or they’re about to be called out) they may try to get ahead of the curve by focusing on all negative aspects of those around them.
Afraid to listen
When you’re in defensive mode, there’s not a lot of room for listening openly. That’s because coming from a defensive place puts up walls where we should open doors. You have to listen to your partner and consider their point of view in order to work with them and find the middle ground. If there’s no room for listening in your relationship, there’s no room for growth and improvement.
Playing blame games
One of the most common defensive behaviors, blame games allow the user to deflect and avoid accountability. When someone uses blame to deflect, they’ll go out of their way to blame you for any issues you claim to experience. They. might come to you with the flip before you have a chance to complain. Or, they may take a complaint you’ve made and claim that you’re the one who is engaging in the toxic behavior. The goal is to avoid the discomfort of personal responsibility.
Looking for justification
Justification is another avenue that the defensive person can use to avoid confronting their issues. Rather than outright deflecting the accusation, they instead look for a reason to validate the negative behavior. This gives them endless ability to stand strong in whatever flawed reaction they’ve engaged in. “I had no other choice,” is commonly heard in this mode. As well as, “You made me do it,” which shifts accountability while acknowledging the poor behavior.
Controlling the story
None of us like confronting issues or mistakes in our relationships, especially when they stem from our choices and emotions. While deflecting and justifying might work for a while, it’s not the only means of putting up walls and refusing to deal with the real challenges at hand. Controlling and manipulating narratives can also be an effective way of defending the ego and. insecurities. Your partner might acknowledge that something is wrong, but rather than looking for a solution, they tell you what to do and how to feel about a situation.
Making excuses
Making excuses can also serve as a defensive behavior. When you’re feeling insecure or uncomfortable, excuses often serve as the perfect opportunity to get out of the thing that you’re dreading. Instead of confronting the issue or conflict at hand, you come up with an excuse to leave and ignore the problem all together. This doesn’t add up to growth, though. And it certainly doesn’t add to any resolution.
How to correct your defensive behaviors.
A defensive nature doesn’t have to stay that way. You can learn to acknowledge the threats and work past them, so you can communicate more effectively with your partner. Curb your insecurities and stand in your compassion.
1. Acknowledge the threats
Although we have distanced ourselves from the fact, humans are animals at heart. We have all kinds of instincts and responses that protect us from danger, and that’s where our defensiveness ultimately comes from. We act defensive when we feel threatened. These threats can happen, and are perceived from experiences. Sensing you’re sliding back into. a “dangerous” or uncomfortable place, you take preventative measures to avoid trauma being inflicted on you.
Take some time to question what is making you feel threatened (or what is making your partner feel threatened). In order to change the behavior, we have to confront these feelings of fear or insecurity. Are you sliding back into past pain whenever you’re confronted with hardship? Do you put up walls so that you don’t have to feel that sadness or disappointment all over again?
Journaling is one of the best ways for us to successfully engage in this process. Sit down and spend some time considering your defensive behavior (or that of your partner). How is it affecting your relationship? How is it changing the way you see one another or communicate? Look around. What is being perceived as threatening? Is change a threat to you? Admitting that you’re not superhuman? Or flawless? Look for the things that threaten ego or the fragile walls you’ve built up to protect yourself from being hurt.
2. Create more feelings of safety
Since our defensiveness comes from a place of insecurity and fear, we have to counteract it by increasing the feelings of safety we have in our environment (and our communication). That doesn’t happen overnight. We have to really put in the work to figure out our insecurities and where the fear is coming from. Then, we have to honestly look at what provides us with comfort in those moments.
How do you find safety in conflict? How do you find comfort in standing up for your needs? Experiment a little. Maybe when feelings get high, you need to step away, spend a few minutes writing your thoughts, then return to the topic when you’re prepared to respond civilly. Maybe the environment needs to change, or the words that you and your partner use. Don’t limit yourself. Follow your feelings and look for comfortable ways to handle the issues that confront your relationship.
3. Encourage your empathy
Empathy is one of those tools that should be at the heart of every couple’s tool kit. Bigger than compassion alone, empathy is the actual art of seeing and understanding emotions in others. When your empathy is activated, you can see how your partner feels and you can put yourself in. that place. You may imagine a time when you felt something similar, or you may just naturally sympathize deeply with the feelings they’re confronting.
Engage with your empathy instead of losing yourself in emotion. Building a. life with another person isn’t easy. There’s always moments of confusion and feeling, but it’s up to us to manage that with shared grace and respect. Leaning into our empathy enables us to do that (and better find shared resolutions).
When your partner comes to you with concerns, listen to them. Open up. Put yourself in their place, and try to feel the emotions that they’re feeling. Likewise, seek partners that can do the same for you. Reaching out to one another (rather than pushing each other away) is a more powerful way to confront the hardships that you find growing between you. Engage with your empathy if your goal is to move beyond the defensiveness.
Putting it all together…
When you (or your partner) get called out or questioned — what happens? Often, when we haven’t spent a lot of time building up our self-esteem, we can react defensively in order to protect ourselves, our egos, and our sense of superiority or worth. This doesn’t make for happy relationships, though. If that’s what we want, we have to drop the defensive behavior and make strides to be more open and accountable.
First, try to understand where defensive behavior comes from. We act this way when we don’t feel safe in our environments or our decisions. Once you see where the behavior is coming from, you can take action to change it. Start by increasing feelings of safety in your life (or your partner’s life). What is the best way to communicate with one another? What allows you to express yourselves freely? Engage with your empathy. Stay grounded in the present and focused on the resolutions you need. If you still can’t get your defensive behavior under check, try looking for something to agree on. Common ground is powerful and allows us to shift our perspectives. Instead of holding on to the defensive behaviors that are poisoning your relationship, work on letting go and working with your partner as a team.
- Kiewitz, C., Restubog, S. L. D., Shoss, M. K., Garcia, P. R. J. M., & Tang, R. L. (2016). Suffering in silence: Investigating the role of fear in the relationship between abusive supervision and defensive silence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(5), 731–742. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000074
- Jaremka, L., Bunyan, D., Collins, N., & Sherman, D. (2011). Reducing defensive distancing: Self-affirmation and risk regulation in response to relationship threats. Journal Of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(1), 264–268. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.08.015