I Got It Wrong - Defensiveness
My wife and I were having a “discussion” the other evening. Well, it was pretty close to a full-blown argument. What might you say was it about? Well, the detail is often lost in the argument itself. The marriage research details that most arguments are actually not really about anything that major. The point was that I found myself being SO DEFENSIVE!
Drs John & Julie Gottman have identified 4 major milestones in marriage conflict that have a 90% chance (if not addressed) to lead to breakup or divorce. The first of these is criticism (as it says), the next is contempt (being superior to your partner), defensiveness (yes that was me), and stonewalling (blocking yourself out emotionally to your partner). Today I’m going to talk through defensiveness.
Now the problem with defensiveness is that when we are being defensive we are usually always looking for reasons why our partner is wrong and/or that we are right. This then tends to mean that we are actually not listening to our partner effectively and to miscommunication. We often then don’t feel “heard” and that our partner is being stubborn or obstinant.
Now one of the keys to breaking out of this pattern is to take some responsibility for the argument. For example, the other night when we were having our discussion if I thought … well my wife is 80% wrong about this topic, but maybe I’m also 20% wrong, it actually refrains the argument to be BOTH your responsibility (the percentages I think sometimes help us connect to this concept and it works with couples in therapy). When we take responsibility for the argument it REFRAMES the argument so you can then take some ownership of it. When we take ownership of something we can then CHANGE it and the problem/argument can then be sorted out.
And this is what happened with that discussion that evening. When I took ownership of my side of the argument we then reached a compromise and the next day everything was sorted. This is just one technique that helps with defensiveness.
Hope this helps you today and chat soon!
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