We like starting off chapters with a powerful illustration that brings home the point of the chapter in a way that only illustrations can. It can feel daunting at times to keep finding new stories and metaphors that work for each chapter. We will scour the Web, browse through books and books of writing illustrations, and even “borrow” really good ones from other books we have read. And then sometimes, God drops the perfect illustration in to our lives through the complexity of our life. This morning, the perfect illustration to why defensiveness does not work and only makes things worse and marriages more unhappy occurred.

My (Michael) dear friend Casey McKown, who lives in the adjacent community of The Woodlands, came to pick us up and drive our family to the airport this morning. We are heading to Phoenix, Arizona to speak at a conference and the kids are joining us. I thought it would be fun to bring the kids to Phoenix and show them where their old man grew up.

As usual, we were all waiting outside in the car for my wife to finally exit the home. Like other crazy ladies out there, my wife has the excruciating need to thoroughly clean the house before leaving on vacation. I can not personally understand this need because my idea of cleanliness has more to do with stench than it does messes on the floor.

Casey and I were standing outside of the car chatting about life and discussing the linear equation to the mathematical equivalent of the speed of light (which I know there are several words in this sentence that are made up or used completely inaccurately). Or we were talking about the latest episode of Battle Star Galactica, because that is how we roll! Anyway, my wife finally comes outside to get in the car, and this is when it happened.

Casey and I were standing at the front of my Honda Odyssey as Amy passed us to get in the van. As she walked by she made a comment that only a wife can make, “Casey, do you see the damage Michael did to the front bumper when he hit a tire yesterday on the freeway.” My reaction was swift and immediate, “What?!” I was upset for two reasons. First, I was upset because I didn’t even know the front bumper was messed up which only further proves what an unmanly man I really am! Secondly, that was totally unfair!

As Amy knelt down by the damaged front bumper, she pointed out the massive black mark and how the side of the bumper was now detached from the van. Amy again highlighted how I’d hit the tire on the freeway which caused the extensive damage. I was beside myself and did what any normal human being does when getting unfairly blamed, I got defensive! In one quick, reactive statement I retorted Amy’s comment by saying, “And by hit a tire on the freeway, do you mean a car swerved in front of us, cutting us off, and blew a tire which then flew across the ground at blinding speeds and smacked in to our front bumper?”

What did I get for my brilliant argument? A simple, yet profound “Nope, you hit it.” And with that Amy got in the car with a wry smile on her face. The kind of smile that says, “Gotcha.” Luckily we are writing a book on personal responsibility, because as I was getting upset and preparing my “you’re not allowed to blame me” speech, God quietly reminded me that my defensiveness was getting me overly worked up. Amy was clearly messing with me, but I was allowing my pride to cause me to react poorly. This is why defensiveness is so unhelpful in relationships.

We define defensiveness as a person’s attempt to resolve a problem through arguing, explaining away, or being combative. When we argue with someone about the facts surrounding a circumstance, we are being defensive. When conflict occurs between two people, the “remembered” facts of the situation are rarely accurate. It never does us any good to argue facts with our spouse (or anyone for that matter). Discussing the facts only causes defensiveness in the person we are arguing with about the facts!

Explaining away is one of the more popular ways to be defensive. It does not initially appear argumentative or combative, but this could not be further from the truth. Take for example a recent couple we saw in one of our Marriage Restoration Intensives. When we asked the wife what it would take to get her marriage from a 3 to a 10 (1 being horrible and 10 being great) she said, “It would be nice if we could spend more time together at home just hanging out and not working on the computer.” The wife’s voice was calm as she shared her need, but the husband’s reaction was swift. “What do you mean spend more time together at home? When I’m home all you seem to want to do is sit on the couch and watch your favorite shows. How can that be spending time together? I would love to spend more time together at home, but it is not my fault this isn’t happening!”

Can you see the breakdown in communication and the defensiveness? The wife was obviously not feeling like they were spending any time together at home. Her definition of spending time together was clearly different than her husband’s, but her husband reacted poorly by getting upset and defensive. The husband took her need as a direct assault on him, as if he was the person at fault for them not spending any time together. So he fought back with defensiveness by trying to explain away his wife’s opinion.

You know the drill. You get accused of something and you feel that if you could only “convince” your spouse about the inaccuracy of her opinion or experience, things would get better. But things do not get better, ever, when we try to explain away our spouse’s feelings or needs.

Defensiveness causes unhappiness and a breakdown in communication because it escalates the negative emotions we might be experiencing in a conflict (or potential conflict). Have you ever experienced your spouse calming down after being defensive? Probably not, so then why do we keep doing it? Because we are not taking personal responsibility of our emotions and choices. Defensiveness is a direct result of a lack of taking responsibility. Who wants to be told their feelings and needs are inaccurate or wrong? No one does.

So then why do we choose to react defensively even though we know it is not going to help the conflict? In our experience, we have found three reasons why people tend to get defensive:
We get defensive because we are sinful.
There is no escaping our sinfulness. We have already discussed this earlier in the book. But we want to keep reminding you of your brokenness. Not because we want you to feel bad about your sin, but because we want you to be humble and understand your spouse’s needs and feelings. Our sin does not define us, God does. In Genesis we learned that we were created in God’s image. This gives us tremendous value. No other part of God’s creation was given this distinction. So your sin does not define who you are. However, it does impact how you behave and that is where we need to be sensitive, humble, and understanding.
We get defensive because we want to prove we are right or our spouse is wrong.
How many arguments have you gotten in to with your spouse because you wanted to prove something? Does it feel good when your spouse or someone else tries to invalidate your feelings or needs? Probably not, we can all relate to how that might feel. Getting in to a who’s right or who’s wrong conversation is never a good thing. The conflict will only get worse and you will never come together as a team if you are constantly on opposing sides or counsel (like lawyers in a courtroom).
We get defensive because we feel bad that something we did was taken wrong or misunderstood.
This reason for defensiveness can be the hardest one to break. The first two reasons are pretty obvious and make logical sense in terms of their negative impact on a marriage. If we are going to be happy in our marriage, then we have to allow our spouse to feel negatively about something we may have unintentionally done. This seems unfair because why should we be punished for something we did not do? It sounds so logical to try and explain away the unintentional hurt of our spouse. “If only he would listen to me and let me explain what I meant, he would feel better.” But our spouse doesn’t feel better after we have tried to explain away the hurt, does he? We do this as well, and we both know it never seems to make things better.

Even though we unintentionally hurt our spouse, we still hurt our spouse. We must come to grips with this concpet. It does not matter in a court of law if you accidentally kill someone. There’s an actual term for this kind of crime, it’s called manslaughter. Manslaughter is a legal term that says you are guilty of a crime even though you did not mean to do it. Maybe you were being wreckless at the time of the accident or maybe you were distracted for only a second, but if you kill someone you will typically get punished – whether you meant to you or not.

The same is true relationally. It does not matter whether or not you meant to hurt your spouse. The reality is that your spouse is hurting. Take on the hurt and listen to how you can repair it. This is a great way to take personal responsibility and a very simple way to help the marriage succeed.

If defensiveness does not work, then what does? How can you start responding differently to your spouse’s hurt or unmet expectations? Check out the following six ways you can respond differently than being defensive. It is not a comprehensive list, but we do feel like the list contains the more important ways you can respond differently:

1. Respond by validating.

We are going to unpack how to validate your spouse in a chapter all by itself. But we wanted to mention it here because we believe it is so important and is actually the exact opposite of being defensive. Validation means that your spouse is more important to you than proving her wrong or proving yourself right.

2. Respond by listening.

Instead of being defensive, try listening for a change of pace. When you listen, it sends a message to your spouse that he is important and worth zipping your lips shut over. Listening is such an easy way to help calm someone down as long as you are listening well.

Listening well involves eye contact, positive energy, and good posture. Rolling your eyes and letting out sigh after sigh is not a good way to listen. Focus all your attention on your spouse and wait to see how things start to calm down.

3. Asking questions

Instead of being defensive, we can ask questions. Too few couples in the world understand the art of simply asking a question. Open ended questions can be a powerful tool in calming down your spouse. An open ended question sounds like, “It feels like I’ve done something to upset you, can you help me understand what I did?” We use questions all the time when our feelings get hurt or when we are feeling defensive. Questions are a nice way to bring the discussion to a more healthy and rationale level.

4. Just allowing your spouse to have her own opinions

We know you are always right! This is the kind of attitude that can get us in trouble in our marriages. We feel like our opinion is superior to our mate’s and we gladly share the differences making sure to highlight the faulty thinking on our mate’s part. Sometimes we need to allow our mate to have a different opinion. There are times when we need to come to a win/win solution, but there are also times when we need to accept our mate’s different opinion.

5. Getting off the facts and on to the feelings

Defensiveness is rarely ever about facts. We get defensive because we are hurting. We are hurting because a button has been pushed (buttons like feeling rejected, controlled, powerless, like a failure, and disconnected. Buttons are more thoroughly unpacked on our website at www.gosmalley.com/tags/hot-buttons).

Just ask yourself the following questions, “Has focusing on facts ever calmed down my spouse in the past?” The answer is obvious, NO! It is pointless to discuss facts with our spouse, especially when we are feeling defensive. Nothing good is going to come out of the discussion, so we need to take the discussion from facts to feelings. If you are intimidated about sharing feelings, then download our list of “hot buttons” from the website and use that list to help you identify what is really bothering you.

6. As the great Bob Newhart said in the now famous YouTube video from Mad TV, “Stop it!” (You have to see this video if you have not already, it will make so much more sense to you! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLMTvxOaeE)

7. When you can’t “stop it” stop talking
Calling a time-out when things aren’t going well is a healthy step. The key is the clock starts ticking for a time-in when you call it. So when you feel defensive ask for a break. Take some time to calm down and to get an attitude adjustment (prayer works best). After you calm down and hopefully God has humbled you. You will be in a better frame of mind to talk again.

Our hope is that you are recognizing how destructive defensiveness is and that it only makes things worse. Stopping it begins with a decision. You have to decide that defensiveness does not work. Once you have made the decision, the next step is to replace the negative behavior (defensiveness) with something different. You can not stop at deciding you want to stop being deffensive. You must replace past behaviors with new ones.

The rest of our book is giving you a different way to behave to replace the negative patterns that have crept in to your marriage. It is not enough to hate the negative things going on in your marriage. Stay alert throughout the next chapters. Each chapter is a different way to respond to your spouse. These chapters are simple guidelines to help you dramatically impact your marriage.

Remember what you learned in the first chapters. You can make an impact on your marriage. You have more influence than you imagine when it comes to impacting your spouse for the positive. We know some of you reading this book are very happy and satisfied. Congrats! The reason you’re happy is probably because you take the time to read books on relationships and attend events and retreats to better your marriage.

Some of you reading this book are wiped out and are hoping this book will be a miracle for your marriage. Our book can be a miracle, the key is understanding that you are the miracle! There are many helpful resources on how to have a better marriage. We do not hold the patent on great relationships. Remember Jesus’ words spoken and recorded in Matthew. Be the person you want others to be. Be the change. Don’t wait for your spouse to get on the healthy marriage train. Jump on yourself and watch what happens. The happy marriage train is a party! Your spouse will hear all the happy noises emanating from the train and she will want to jump on with you! The more healthy you are, the more your marriage has a chance of succeeding and being satisfied.