This Changes Everything in Communication

cupandinspiration

When feelings are brought up and one partner gets defensive, it often comes from shame — not from a lack of care. Shame triggers self-protection, and that’s how couples fall into the blame-defend loop. Understanding this pattern is the first step toward emotional safety and healthier love.  ✨ Subscribe for more self-growth and relationship-healing content: @cupandinspiration

Transcript

00:00When you bring up your feelings or a complaint and your partner defends themselves, gets defensive,

00:06what is going on and what do you do? Let's talk about that for a minute. So let's say the woman

00:10says, hey, can we talk about our relationship? I'm feeling kind of disconnected and I miss you.

00:15And then he goes, why are you bringing this up right now? I'm tired. I'm stressed at work. Don't

00:21you see like everything I'm doing for you? Ouch. So let's dissect this a little bit. What is

00:26actually going on here? So the woman in this case is just bringing up feelings, right? I miss you.

00:33I'm kind of lonely. I don't like how this feels. Can we talk about it? Barely innocent. And she's

00:38not doing really anything wrong. She's just bringing up, hey, this doesn't feel great. Can we talk?

00:43And unfortunately for this man, instead of listening to her and validating her feelings and being like,

00:49wow, it sounds like you're okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Huh? I have been kind of distant. Instead of

00:56any of that, he goes into defense. And when we defend ourselves, me included, we are protecting

01:03something. It's like, we got to ask, what am I defending? What is the big deal? So for a guy who,

01:08you know, boys are trained from a very young age to be right, to know the answer, to have it all

01:13figured out, to fix things. And a woman's emotions are very hard to fix. So he feels inadequate and

01:18ashamed and embarrassed and incompetent. And you're saying, you're just bringing up feelings. Can we talk?

01:24And for some reason, he goes into shame. And instead of feeling that shame and taking any

01:28responsibility, he postures over it and defends it like his life depends on it. And he doesn't

01:33really know this is going on, which makes it even harder to address. And he's basically protecting his

01:39self-image because he feels criticized and judged. He doesn't want you to perceive him as doing it wrong

01:47or as a bad person or anything like that, or as incompetent. And so this happens in nanoseconds that

01:53he'll defend himself and go into his whole thing, right? Oh man, this is so frustrating. Yeah. So for the

01:59guys out there or anyone who defends themselves, you have got to start getting curious about your

02:05defensiveness, right? Because what this turns into, if you don't, is a classic blame-defend loop.

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