You Can’t Fix Your Partner’s Defensiveness

Key points

• Remember that your partner’s anger and defensiveness are about them-not you.
• Stop trying to fix or change a defensive partner; instead, accept their limitation as reality.
• Respond like a “stone”: stay calm, don’t react, and avoid validating their narrative.

…

So far in this series, I’ve been looking at anger and defensiveness in relationships, and specifically the habitual responses we fall into to try and manage and survive it. Here in Part 7, I want to offer some action steps, boots-on-the-ground strategies to change your relationship with your partner’s anger-and with yourself in the face of it.

When anger and defensiveness arise in this other person, remember that they are not actually seeing you in those moments; you are just an inverted mirror for them. They project their self-criticism, loathing, shame, and everything else they don’t want to feel or see about themselves onto you. While it doesn’t make it okay that they behave this way, remember, their rage belongs to and is about them-not you.

Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, had some helpful advice when it came to dealing with anger, which is as applicable today as it was when he offered it over 2,000 years ago. In short, Epictetus counseled that when you’re being deluged with someone else’s rage, listen like a stone. Don’t defend yourself or try to set the record straight. Don’t attempt to bring rationality into an irrational situation. Behave like a stone. Stones are not bothered by anyone else’s choices; you can shout at them, and they remain unperturbed and unchanged.

Remember, when someone is in a defensive episode, they want you to react, to bite the hook and get pulled into their story. They’re baiting you to start defending yourself, going after them, and joining them in their “code red.” Your emotional reactivity allows them to validate their victimhood: “See what you’re doing to me?”

The root of your suffering, in part, comes from the expectation that a rational request should bring a rational response. This is not to say that it’s not profoundly disappointing, enraging, and saddening that your partner behaves like this, and yet, when someone is emotionally immature and insecure, to believe that they would respond in any way other than immaturely and defensively is… madness. It is to expect a fragile person to act in a non-fragile way.

The work is recognizing this expectation inside yourself, and seeing their ego fragility and inability to hear feedback as disabilities, like any other. In the same way that you would not expect a blind person to be able to drive a car, you cannot expect or make someone who is emotionally immature behave in a sensible and sensitive manner. This person doesn’t have the capacity to tolerate responsibility. It’s not going to happen.

Treat their limitation as a what-is and expect behavior that aligns with that reality. While it’s heartbreaking to accept that you’re not going to get what you want from this person, it’s also liberating to let go of the expectation that a different outcome is possible. When you stop fighting with reality, you might also decide that you want to change your life, which might include your relationship.

It’s important, too, to change your response when they go into victim mode, withdraw, or go silent to punish you for telling them they hurt you. Don’t bite the hook or chase after them; don’t play the character they’ve written for you in their dysfunctional story. Let them do what they need to do; turn your attention to your own life and what you need to do to establish independence and create well-being for yourself. Leave them to play out their drama in their cave of blindness.

If they switch into attack mode and blame you, trying to make you feel guilty for telling them they hurt you, hold your ground. Continue repeating the same sentence that states what happened that’s not okay with you.

When they distort your words or veer off topic, use simple language in response: “That’s not actually what I said,” “We can discuss my shortcomings another time, but right now I want to focus on now.” But always come back to the same script that states what you’re upset about now, what you need, and what you don’t want in the relationship any longer. Keep a flat, robotic tone. Behave like you’re coated in Teflon-an impenetrable stone. Imagine that you’re with a toddler having a tantrum, which, in fact, you are-only it’s an adult toddler who may also be your partner.

Do not apologize for what you haven’t done. Instead, hold the ground of your truth and stay connected to your own needs; hold on to yourself right there in the eye of their tsunami.

Finally, know that you don’t ever need permission to exit a conversation that feels damaging or poisonous to you. You can always suggest that you “revisit the issue later,” as you “think you both need some space at the moment.” Remember, you are responsible for your own well-being; you are your own caretaker-choose to be that caretaker for yourself. No one has the right to harm you.

This knowing is so important I’ll say it again-no one has the right to harm you. You always have the right to create a physical boundary, to walk out of the room and create distance from their toxic energy. As Marcus Aurelius, the second-century Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, taught, you may share a physical space with this other person, but you don’t have to give them access to your internal mental or emotional space.

A Cheat Sheet for Responding to Anger and Defensiveness

Don’t:

• Try to figure out how to make the other person change, or understand your experience.
• Try to get them to “hear” you or take responsibility for their actions.
• Take care of them and reassure them that all is well.
• Defend yourself, attack back, or engage in their distorted storyline.
• Assume responsibility for their anger.
• Feel guilty for having needs.
• Try to “win them back” when they withdraw or stonewall.
• Wait for them to apologize or feel empathy.
• Expect an emotionally disabled person to behave with wisdom and awareness.
• Deny the reality of how you feel and who they are.
• Indulge the fantasy that it will be different next time and give the broken system one more try.
• Give them access to your mental and emotional space.

…

DO:

• Stop trying to make them “hear” you.
• Start establishing independence-emotionally, physically, socially, and financially.
• Trust your truth and intuition: if it feels bad for you, it’s bad for you.
• Remind yourself that you’re allowed to have needs. Needs are healthy.
• Pause to feel your feelings, instead of rushing to fix the situation.
• Practice staying quiet and feeling what’s happening inside your body when you would normally rush to fill in the silence.
• Remind yourself that you’re learning to tolerate discomfort and uncertainty in the face of conflict-to get okay with not being okay. This is a big deal that will change your life and it doesn’t happen overnight.
• Honor yourself each time you do things differently. When you break an old habit, and refrain from cleaning up the mess the other person created, acknowledge your efforts to change a situation that fundamentally doesn’t work for you.

Originally published at https://www.psychologytoday.com.