When Does Explanation Become Defensiveness?
Are You Offering Context...Or Justifying What You Did?
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Raise your hand if you prefer not to hear much about why your partner did what they did when they're apologizing for a hurt.
I'm betting a decent number of you nodded along. Many people find it really unhelpful to hear about the circumstances or reasoning behind their partner's behavior if that behavior felt hurtful.
(If you don't resonate at all, keep reading, because we're going to get into why you might feel totally opposite).
And I get it, because "I'm just explaining what happened" can be a euphemism for "I'm defending myself and trying to evade accountability."
To counteract the possibility that an explanation is just defensiveness in disguise, the common wisdom about repair seems to have become: "When you're repairing, your intent doesn't matter. Your context doesn't matter. Focus on your partner's pain and the impact on them."
But in my experience, it's a bit more nuanced. Because hearing your partner say, "yes I did hurt you, I see that it was incredibly painful for you, that was unacceptable behavior on my part" and then explain absolutely nothing about why they did what they did can actually feel very unsettling in some situations! Like...okay, if they know what they did sucked, why the heck did they do it?
Non-defensive explanations don't ease the pain of a hurt, but they can create meaning and facilitate processing. You may miss out if you put up a "no explaining your actions when repairing" wall in your relationship.
So...should you tell your partner the back story behind your actions when they're hurting? What differentiates productive explanation from reactive defensiveness? And how should you proceed if your partner insists that they absolutely do not want to hear a word of your reasons?
I'm going to walk you through it, so let's discuss.