Action Step #1: Realize the very real danger of defensiveness
Defensiveness. It’s an ugly D-word. And according to a lot of research, it’s actually a key predictor that your relationship is heading for trouble—in part because it is simply the visible sign of an unhealthy emotional response to feeling ashamed, unloved, attacked, and/or insecure. Defensiveness is one of relationship researcher John Gottman’s “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” which, along with criticism, contempt, and stonewalling are among the criteria he uses to predict divorce with over 90% accuracy.
Divorce is an ugly D-word, too. And the concept doesn’t just apply to marriages. How many people can remember a friendship that got acrimonious and fell apart, or a job situation that got increasingly unpleasant until you had to leave? All too often, an underlying defensive attitude was running under the surface there, too. It is a toxic emotion.
It is also a human emotion. Every one of us has a tendency to “defend” ourselves when we feel blamed—by others or ourselves. But it can become a vicious cycle. Our defensiveness can be seen as an attack by the other person, which leads them to go on offense, which leads us to feel more need for self-protection … and so on. In the process, we build a habit. Our defensiveness becomes a state of mind, in which we subconsciously start looking for signs of criticism or signs that this person just doesn’t care about us. And of course, what we look for is what we will see—even if we would have never assumed the worst from that person’s words or actions if we had been in a more generous state of mind.
We need to interrupt the cycle.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In