Excerpt From
Is Anyone Listening? Repairing Broken Lines in Couples Communication
copyright by Sandra Michaelson 

from Chapter 2

Confronting Your Partner with His Flaws

Healthy communication has nothing to do with confronting your partner with a litany of his faults or dredging up past grievances and smearing them in his face. Reciting your partner's flaws with the hope that he will own up to his mistakes or change his behavior is a recipe for disappointment and a turn-off for your partner.

Nor does healthy communication expect others to own up to their mistakes, change their personality, and do what you want. Such needs indicate you are making yourself dependent on your partner to change: "I can't be okay until he mends his ways." Brandishing his flaws will most likely cause him to resist making the changes you so desire.

Those of us who resort to brandishing flaws do so because our parents controlled us this way, usually invoking shame. Consequently, we dump our assessments onto our partner in the same manner we felt dumped on. However, should our partner dare address us with a list of our flaws, we react with indignation.

As I said, your partner won't be motivated to change simply because you point out his character defects. In fact, he will probably resist all the more. People change when they are genuinely motivated to do so, particularly when there is no outside force "making" them behave. It is true that under the gun your partner may make modifications in his behavior, but such adjustments usually have at best only a month-long life-cycle.

Let us take an example. Leia found many things to complain about in her husband, George, and she didn't hesitate to let him know where and why he was going astray. She hoped that getting George to change his insensitive behavior (ignoring her, calling her names when he was angry, failing to phone her when he was late) would make her feel better and solve their marital problems. Her comments and analyses, unfortunately, had little effect. George would "be good" for a couple of days and then revert back to his old behavior. But Leia was making him responsible for her happiness and thus being dependent on him to change his ways in order to feel okay about herself.

This kind of emotional dependency is a formula for ongoing disappointment. Requiring your partner to change according to your specifications and for your benefit feels to him like submission. Thus he feels he has no choice but to resist.

By focusing on his flaws, Leia had put George at the center of her life. I taught her to shift the focus from his flaws to how his flaws affected her (this is not to ignore or cover up the reality of his flaws). Leia saw that she was wallowing in feeling disappointed, deprived, let down, controlled, and oppressed. Once she recognized that her attachment to these feelings had its origins in childhood with her father, she began to shift the spotlight away from George and to develop an interest in her feelings, interests, and hobbies. She became more outgoing with her friends, took classes, and focused on changing her attitudes and developing her talents. With this shift in her, George spontaneously began to pursue her and became more sensitive to her.

By seeing more clearly into her reactions, Leia became more effective in communicating to George her feelings about his behavior. She was able to say, for instance: "I know you're not doing this to hurt me, but when you stay out and don't call and don't include me in your plans, I feel unimportant, not respected. If we are going to have a loving relationship, and that's the only kind of relationship I want, you must take my feelings into consideration. And that may mean you'll have discover why you've been insensitive to me up to this point."

George was now motivated to find out more about why he treated those he loved with insensitivity. He had picked up this pattern from his father who had treated George and his mother with cold indifference. George began to connect with feelings of neglect from his childhood, and that enabled him to understand how Leia felt about his insensitivity toward her.

Before understanding his past and accessing those feelings, George had believed that his behavior toward Leia was normal and that Leia had been expecting too much. The couple now have a completely new loving relationship.

Their experience shows that change occurs only when we decide to change, not when it is forced upon us from the outside. As long as we feel we are in rebellion against some authority figure, and that can include our partner, we will resist looking at ourselves and our own behaviors. When there is no one to struggle against, automatically we are forced to look at ourselves.

"Every time I say anything to my husband about what I'm feeling or what is happening in our relationship, he goes berserk," one woman related. "He yells, screams, tells me I'm stupid or wrong or that I have my facts upside down. He tells me I do the same, only much worse. He turns the discussion to me and my problems and rarely addresses the issue I raised."

This is a clear case of the man who "doth protest too much." A person who, when criticized or challenged, acts defensively (either with anger, sobbing, lengthy repetitive excuses, vehement denials, blaming others, apologies, the silent treatment, or distortion of facts), is suffering from a low sense of self-worth and an unconscious propensity to receive comments or criticisms as an indication of inadequacy. Such an individual soaks in criticism and expects to be disapproved of. Acting defensively means you are more invested in protecting your self-image than in hearing what your partner has to say.

Acting defensively is most often an indication of guilt, meaning you "buy into" what the other person is saying about you even though you may disagree with the statement on a logical level. But since we are so prone to be considered wrong or bad, we jump on any form of criticism that comes our way and become reactive.

For these reasons, many of us feel we are being personally attacked when our partner may be simply giving an innocent observation about us or expressing what he or she feels. Feeling attacked can be an indication that you have an emotional investment from your childhood in feeling unjustly accused, blamed, and held responsible. It can also indicate an unconscious attachment to the feeling of being seen as defective, inadequate, or unworthy. Frequently feeling attacked indicates you don't think highly of yourself, and often reproach and criticize yourself.

Someone who is quick to feel attacked will have a judgmental, condemning attitude toward others. In other words, we usually treat others the way we treat ourselves. To disguise our own inner ongoing devaluation process, we inflate our value on the surface and require others to validate our worth. Any critical comment can easily shake up our precarious sense of self-worth.

Ask yourself whenever you overreact to a situation, "Why does this bother me so much? How am I interpreting this situation?" Our reactions can teach us something about ourselves. They can be a source of insight and revelation or a creative way to torture ourselves.

An intense emotional response from your partner may indicate he is taking your comments in a way that you didn't intend. Try to respond with a statement such as, "I can see from your reaction that you're having strong feelings about this. Can you tell me why this bothers you so much?" Or, "I didn't intend to hurt you or upset you so much. How are you interpreting what I'm saying?"

People who are confident and know themselves don't crumble or react aggressively when others disapprove or criticize. They consider the appropriateness of the other person's perception and what can be learned from it. If they disagree, they appropriately say so. They understand that what the other person is saying about them may not accurately reflect the real situation.

They also understand that the other person may be projecting or transferring his own issues onto them. Consequently, confident individuals don't personalize the critical comments of others, realizing that the critic's comments reveal issues concerning himself.

Imagine what it would be like to go through our lives without having to defend ourselves, not just to others, but to ourselves as well. Imagine how liberating it would be to admit our weaknesses and mistakes without feeling guilty or bad about ourselves. What a relief not to have to come up with excuses and rationalizations for our behavior, to say simply, "I'm sorry. I made a mistake. I should have paid more attention to your needs." How refreshing to discard some impossible standard of perfection, which doesn't exist anyway, and to say,. "Yes, I am a little dysfunctional in that area. I need to look at that more closely." Or to say to ourselves, "So, I'm imperfect."

When you can see and accept your own defects, you automatically become more at peace with the defects of others. Just because your partner has flaws or defects doesn't mean you can't extract value, fun, and enjoyment from being together. We don't have to be perfect in order to feel fulfilled and satisfied with each other. But isn't that what we feel about ourselves--that we have to be practically perfect in order to feel good about who we are?

In summary, rather than take offense, first consider the validity of your partner's comments. If you feel they have no validity, then look beyond your partner's words into his motivations and intentions. Try to determine the feelings that prompt your partner's anger, hurt, or annoyance. What you see as anger may really be fear; what you see as criticism may be an expression of concern.

Your partner may be unconsciously projecting onto you what he is denying in himself. Or, he may be transferring onto you some unresolved emotional issue that occurred with a past parent-figure.

Consider the possibility that your partner's need to communicate or discuss issues is motivated by love or a sincere desire to make things work better between you. Remain objective and focus on how your partner feels and interprets what is happening.