You’re Not Defending Yourself, You’re Just Being Stubborn

It’s a weird feeling to be in the middle of an argument and suddenly realize that you’re in the wrong. You’ll be adamant about your perspective and out of nowhere you see yourself through the other person’s eyes.

Sometimes, what we think are our most valid feelings are actually just insecurities in disguise. Being able to truly see yourself from another person’s perspective only proves this.

When we’re confronted with situations that require us to see things from someone else’s perspective, it’s easy to accidentally filter everything you hear through the framework of your own experiences and perspective.

Where then, is the line between defending that perspective and merely being too stubborn to see things differently?

Let’s add some context here.

What got me thinking about this was looking back on a conversation I was having with my Ex. We had a few good years together and things ended pretty dramatic and suddenly — that’s a story for another time — but we’re still friends and keep in touch.

Every time we end up on the topic of our current love interests or how we feel about our new relationship prospects, the conversation has a tendency to veer into the past and we start talking about how our own relationship had ended.

Long story very short:

After a few years of being together, I was starting to have doubts about the relationship and was wondering if it would be best to end it. During this uncertain time, she had a mental health crisis that left her with legitimate diagnosable issues and was causing her to rethink where she was going to have to live. We both lived in California, but she was going to visit family in Florida for a little while and was considering moving back there permanently to try and get her life together.

My perspective:

This was all confirmation of how suffocated I felt being with a person with so many personal issues to reconcile. I saw the whole situation as an opportunity for her to take time to herself to get her head straight in a safe environment, and during that time we would have little to no contact as we each took some personal time to decide if we should stick it out or go our separate ways.

Her perspective:

I abandoned her in her time of need. When she needed me most, I was more concerned with myself and how I felt about it all than the fact that she just went through something traumatic and potentially life-changing. I was being selfish and lacked compassion for her situation and my lack of concern for her well-being was confirmation of that.

A few weeks after returning home from her visit, she told me she had to move back for good.

I didn’t put up a fight. In my mind, she had no other options. She had personal issues to deal with and I saw them as just that, personal. I knew I needed the space and the entire situation felt toxic for me and something that would only distract me and pull me away from the other things in my life I wanted to focus on. She needed to get better, and this was the “only” way other than moving out of my cramped-with-roommates house and somehow financially supporting both of us in our own place while she got better on her own.

She saw this as a complete lack of empathy and felt abandoned and unloved. I saw it as an opportunity for her to work on her personal life and get herself in order so she could start to cultivate a sense of self-assuredness and confidence in herself that she never seemed to have before. She did not agree.

She moved home, we spent time apart, and now we still talk on the phone occasionally to catch up and bullshit as friends do. It’s all water under the bridge…sort of.

When our conversations start to steer into talking about those past issues, we both always seem to continue defending our side without truly understanding the other’s perspective.

I tell her I understand that she feels I abandoned her, but if she would only try to see the state of mind I was in while everything was going down, she’d be able to understand why I felt how I felt. She says she gets it, but it was still selfish and an unacceptable way to act in her time of need.

. . .

You see, in situations like this where you think you’re merely defending yourself and simply want your perspective to be understood, you sometimes don’t realize how stubborn you’re really being when it comes to setting your own interests aside for the sake of another person.

Maybe my situation is different than what most people come across in their daily lives, but it still serves as an example for how blinded you can be to the needs of others in the name of “standing up for yourself.”

I can see now that despite how I felt during those tumultuous times, and regardless of whether or not she understood my perspective, I was still being selfish.

I was more concerned with how it all was affecting my life, that I completely failed to recognize how it must feel for her. In my “defense” of myself, I was stubbornly refusing to just say, “You’re right, I was being self-centered and I could have done a lot more to help you out when you needed it most.”

I can understand that in the heat of the moment, at the time you’re actually making the decisions that will affect you later on, it can be hard to see these things clearly. You get so caught up in maintaining your sense of control that you mistakenly neglect to take the needs of others into consideration.

In hindsight, however, you should be able to see how your actions and words affected the other person and how, despite how you felt in the moment, you’re never entirely right. The other person has a completely different experience and perspective than you do, so how can you say that you are ever going to be 100% valid in your mindset?

How are you going to learn from understanding this and use that awareness to not make the same short-sighted mistake the next time you find yourself caught up in the heat of a moment?

I found myself continuing to defend a perspective I had in a drama that unfolded over two years ago. I was still trying to convince her that I was right in how I felt when in reality her argument was always more valid for the sheer fact that it involved compassion and empathy while mine only involved ego and self-interest.

There is a fine line between defending yourself and being stubborn. I was a culprit of the latter and I can admit that now. The lesson learned here is that you can always find a way into understanding someone else’s perspective if you just try.

If you can set aside your ego and incessant need for self-preservation you’ll find that what perhaps only looks like standing up for yourself is actually a refusal to step outside of what feels comfortable for your sense of self.

It’s a refusal to put down your sword and shield for a moment because a battle is unnecessary, and your only duty is to sit and understand the other person.

To be on neither the attack nor defense, but to just simply be there when someone needs you to be and not be too stubborn to take off your armor.

You’re both simply people living through different experiences. Each one is valid. Stop trying to be so formidable.

And just be a friend.

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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.

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