Transcription
Have you ever had an argument with your partner where you were just trying to get your point across? You were trying to get them to listen, yet they were the one who ended up in tears. You walk away feeling like the bad guy, but you also feel like you were the one who was attacked. You think to yourself, "I was just explaining. I was just trying to get them to understand. I was just clarifying." But somehow they felt more hurt, angry, and more disconnected.
This is where I say that defensiveness is normal. But, and this is a really big butt, defensiveness, even when you feel that it's justified, it can easily become emotionally abusive. Not because you're cruel and not because you want to hurt your partner, but because of the emotional impact that defensiveness has on the person who's trying to reach you. Today, we're going to talk about how defensiveness protects you from shame and often unintentionally injures the person that you love and sabotages your relationship.
Now, if you're hearing this and you're thinking to yourself, "This is me, or maybe this is my partner and he or she desperately needs to hear this video," share it. And if you're watching this video because your partner sent this to you, my question to you is, are you going to do something about this? Is this something that you are aware of, but you just have refused to do anything about? And ask yourself the question, why? I know. I know. It's them. It's not you, right? Wrong. The truth is, it's both of you. You both create these dynamics, but sometimes one person has far more work to do than the other. And if that person's you, what are you waiting on?
Hi, I'm Dr. Scott Sims. I run the program Breaking Reactive Patterns, the blueprint for building a safe and healthy relationship. If you're new to my channel, welcome. My mission is to help you wake up to how your dysfunctional patterns are breaking down the connection in your relationship that sabotages your fulfillment, your happiness, and ultimately the longevity of your relationship. I teach you the skills of safety and security that you were never taught growing up and how to become the healthy adult so you can actually maximize your relationship and break these patterns so that you don't end up in the separation or a divorce. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and turn on the bell for notifications for when I post a new video weekly.
Okay, so why does defensiveness feel so justified? Let's start here. Defensiveness is not random. It's a threat response. When your partner says, "You hurt me." Your mind interprets this as, "I did something wrong. I'm flawed." Which turns into, "I'm a bad person." Shame. Which then turns into "I might lose love." Rejection. Each of these interpretations are driven by schemas, which are dysfunctional beliefs, and they feel threatening. I don't want my partner to see me as flawed. I don't want to be seen as a bad person. I don't want to be rejected. Do you hear the defensiveness? It's a pushing against. "I don't want this." And when you're experiencing this, your nervous system goes straight into survival mode. That is fight, which is you argue, you correct, you push back. Flight, you avoid, you shut down, you withdraw. Freeze, your mind goes blank and you shut down. Or fawning, you say you're sorry, but you don't actually empathize. You're just looking to escape the situation, the conflict, the discomfort, and you're trying to reconnect.
Defensiveness isn't always you trying to dominate your partner. It's actually you trying not to drown in your own shame or feel the intense discomfort of your schemas. But here's the painful part. Your partner doesn't experience your shame. Your partner experiences your behavior. While you're trying to protect your self-worth, they're trying to feel emotionally safe with you. They want to feel heard and understood and cared about. And those two goals collide.
So, we need to understand how defensiveness becomes emotional abuse. Let's be very clear about something. Emotional abuse is not defined only by intent. It's defined by repeated emotional impact that leaves someone feeling small, unseen, and unsafe. Statistically, men and women in long-term relationships experience emotional abuse at approximately the same rate, which is about 48%.
So, let's talk about the four major ways that defensiveness impacts your relationship. Number one, it erases your partner's emotional reality. Now, that sounds pretty dramatic. A very simple explanation is this. Imagine that you're in a very dark room with your partner and you step on their foot. Your partner says, "Ow, that hurt. You stepped on my foot." And you respond with, "Well, it's dark in here. It's not my fault. You're overreacting. You're too sensitive. Well, sometimes you step on my foot and I don't care about it." You may feel like you're defending the truth, but the message that they receive is, "My feelings don't matter." Over time, this creates self-doubt in your partner. They start questioning their own perceptions, their reactions, their right to even feel hurt at all. They begin to feel scared to tell you how they're feeling or tell you how you're hurting them without feeling guilty because you've turned it around on them somehow. That erosion of emotional reality is deeply destabilizing for the person experiencing it.
Number two, it forces your partner to carry the emotional load alone. When you defend instead of empathize, something subtle happens. Your partner feels alone with their hurt to deal with it on their own. No comfort, no understanding, no shared emotional processing. So, they either escalate to try to be heard or they shut down and they don't want to bring things up. All of it is disconnecting and it all results in relationship drift. Defensiveness teaches your partner that emotional connection with you is unsafe because you can turn on them at any moment.
Number three, every hurt turns into some kind of debate. Instead of, "I hurt you, let me understand," the conversation becomes, "Let me explain why you shouldn't feel that way." Now, they're not talking to their partner. They're arguing with a lawyer. There's no repair in that space, only winners and losers. There's no trust building, and it's just emotionally exhausting. When someone has to argue about the validity of how they feel or their pain or hurts, they eventually stop sharing them with you because what's the point? And then more drifting.
Number four, it makes your partner feel like the attacker. Over time, your partner might start to think, "I can't say anything right. I always end up apologizing when I'm the one who was hurt. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I am too sensitive or too weak." That role reversal is incredibly damaging. Your partner comes to you hurt and somehow they leave feeling guilty for even bringing it up. This is where defensiveness really crosses into emotional abuse territory. Not because you intend to do it, but because you're more focused on protecting yourself and your ideas of yourself than to tune into your partner's emotional reality. So, you repeatedly deny and push away.
Now, this causes a lot of long-term damage in the relationship. And remember, most relationships don't end overnight. They erode slowly over time. And that defensiveness leads to the erosion. It's emotional withdrawal, less vulnerability, less affection, less sexual connection, more resentment, and more loneliness inside the relationship. Eventually, your partner just stops reaching out. Not because they don't care, but because it hurts too much. Being vulnerable, open, and honest with how they feel triggers their threat response because they don't want to feel attacked, blamed, criticized, devalued, or shut out. So, they keep it all inside. And ironically reason that feeling detached in this relationship is safer than feeling connected. And guess where that leads? That's when a couple ends up as roommates or they end up in a divorce court.
Okay, you know me by now. I'm not going to just tell you about defensiveness without giving you anything to do. So, how do we shift away from defensiveness? As you're watching my videos, you probably know by now that the goal is not to stop having reactions. The goal is to break the sabotaging defense patterns that are getting in the way of connection, intimacy, and growth. The goal is to build skills to respond in a way that creates safety instead of distance. To do that, you must address the core problems first. Schemas are at the core of your defensiveness, your dysfunctional behavior in relationships, because they're beliefs. You're filtering your experiences of your partner through these and inadvertently sabotaging yourself and the relationship. So, changing your defensiveness means you have to restructure and challenge the dysfunctional beliefs so that you can drop your defenses and connect.
Those of us who have struggled with defensiveness were never taught the skills that are necessary for connection. So when we get triggered, we just default back to our old immature defenses that have no place in a healthy adult relationship. This is what I teach in my program, Breaking Reactive Patterns. When you're ready to transform yourself, schedule a discovery call. The links are right below this video.
In the meantime, here are several steps that you can take to help you break this defensive pattern. Step one, regulate before responding. I cannot stress this enough. Emotional regulation is key to having a healthy and happy relationship. And emotional regulation begins with self-awareness and the ability to own your flaws while also learning to communicate from that flawed place. So, this sounds like, "I notice I'm getting defensive. I want to hear you, but give me a second so I can tune in." And if that means you have to go in the other room for a couple of minutes to just calm your body down, your nervous system down, take some deep breaths, get regulated, remind yourself that the person you're talking to is your partner, your love, and then return and pay attention to what they're saying. That alone starts to build trust. And it's showing your partner that you're aware of yourself rather than just reacting. And you may not get it right the first dozens of times, but the more you keep practicing this, the better and better you get at it.
Step two, lead with validation of impact, not explanation of intent. Instead of, "I didn't mean it like that," try, "I can see that really hurt you." Impact matters first, so you have to validate it. Intent matters later, but doesn't take away from being hurt. So, let's go back to our dark room scenario, and you step on your partner's foot. "Ow, that hurt. You stepped on my foot." In a loving tone, you say something like, "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. That must have definitely hurt. It's really dark in here and I don't know where I'm going. Are you okay? What can I do?" That demonstrates that you're paying attention to how your partner feels and you're understanding how they feel. You're validating that their foot is in pain. You're not defending that you didn't mean to or it's dark in here.
And step three, take ownership of effect. Part of restructuring dysfunctional beliefs means that you've challenged them enough to know that they're wrong and that you can see the dysfunction that they cause, but that's not enough to reprogram yourself. In BRP, [snorts] one way that we shift our beliefs is by using the seven tenants of relational safety. Tenant one is "I take full responsibility for my behavior and the effects it has on the people I love, whether intended or not." This sounds like, "I can see how that landed. I'm sorry you didn't deserve that." That's emotional maturity, and that's what's required for connection.
And here's an easy way to remember this. Validation calms the nervous system. Defensiveness activates it. One creates safety and connection. The other creates distance. I want to reiterate that defensiveness is a normal human condition. It does not mean that you're toxic. It means that you're underskilled at tolerating shame and emotional discomfort. That's learnable. Those are skills you can learn. The opposite of defensiveness is not passivity. It's not submission. It's curiosity. It's the ability to reflect on yourself honestly. And that is emotional strength. It's our ability to hear "I was hurt by you" without collapsing into shame of "I'm a terrible person" or shoving it off onto them. "Look at what you're doing to me." When you build that capacity, your partner feels safer. And when they feel safe, they soften instead of harden.
So ask yourself, when my partner brings up a hurt, do they feel closer to me or more alone? Do I listen to understand or do I defend my image? Is my partner afraid to bring things up to me? Defensiveness protects you in the moment, but curiosity and empathy protects your relationship. And learning that skill might be the difference between slowly losing the person that you love and finally becoming the person that they feel safe with.
If this video speaks to you or you are hearing this in your relationship and you want to send this on to your partner, the time to do something about your relationship is now. Click the links below this video to schedule a discovery call and I'll tell you all about breaking reactive patterns and we'll just see if we're the right fit for one another. The discovery call is free. There's no commitment. It begins with you.