Defensiveness in Relationships: Why You Keep Having the Same Fight

Matthew: Everybody starts freaking out. Everybody goes into a place in which they’re scared, they’re on the defensive.

Dr. Lisa: It feels like you and your partner are having the same fight over and over again. You’re not alone. This is a very common dynamic for a lot of couples to get locked into this ongoing conflict and just get stuck in it, cannot resolve it, cannot find their way out.

Matthew: Some people disappear, some people shut down, and then some people will go ahead and absorb way too much of the stress in that moment.

Dr. Lisa: If you can relate, I’m so glad you’re here for this episode of Love, Happiness, and Success, because we are going into the heart of this. And you’re going to leave this episode with a new understanding of what is really going on at the core and some actionable things you can do to change the story, change the narrative, have a productive conversation, and find your way forward.

Matthew: There’s one of my therapists said to me once upon a time, he said, “Well, Matt, you can be right, or you can be loving.” And that kind of just stopped me in my tracks, you know?

Dr. Lisa: If this is your first time tuning in, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m your host, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I am a marriage and family therapist, also a psychologist, and a very proud board certified coach here with you every week, talking about your actualization, life satisfaction, relationships, and more. And today I’m so pleased to be with a very special guest, my friend and colleague, Matthew Caplan, who works with me at Growing Self. And Matthew is also a marriage and family therapist, board certified coach, who specializes in exactly these kinds of conundrums. And so, Matthew, hello.

Matthew: Hello, Lisa, thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Lisa: This, thank you for being here, first of all. I could not think of anyone better to dive into this with me because, you know, Matthew, I think that I love about you and your work, is that you bring so much depth to it. And even though you are a coaching therapist, and we’re always ultimately looking for, all right, so what do we need to do differently? I think you can really help people understand why it is feeling so hard, and that makes everything possible. So just to start with that, you are such an experienced marriage and family therapist, and I know that probably, you know, eight in 10 couples who come to you have this experience. It just turns into a fight. When somebody says, “Pass the salt,” and all of a sudden there’s like this reactivity and everybody’s mad, what’s going on?

Matthew: Well, what’s going on is that none of us was really adequately prepared to encounter situations like this, and I would propose that many, if not most of us, grew up in family systems, and even more broadly in a culture that really has no idea what it’s doing when it comes to this issue.

Dr. Lisa: That is so true. I mean, I just had a flashback to my own parents, and they were not good role models for like constructive conflict. There are all kinds of things that happened in my house growing up. So, I mean, when you think about the issue, like what people really need to understand that nobody teaches us, can you just kind of talk us through, like what the elements of being able to handle friction points well? What does that even involve?

Matthew: Well, the way the conversation usually begins with people that come in is that they want to talk about their communication. When I hear communication is an issue, immediately what I’m thinking about is what we feel like when we are in these moments, and what’s happening in our bodies, what’s happening in our thinking, what’s happening in our nervous system while all of this is happening. We have not, for the most part, been prepared to recognize situations like these as they need to be accurately understood, which is as a sense of threat. When our partner is upset with us or when we’re upset with our partner, what’s happening below the level of your awareness is that you feel threatened. And when you feel threatened by the disconnection in the moment, or you’re feeling blamed as a part of that, whatever’s happening, oh, my partner is upset, they’re angry, and they are perceiving me as that, I am at fault for this. Everybody starts freaking out. Everybody goes into a place in which they’re scared, they’re on the defensive, and we lose the ability to be curious with one another, we lose the understanding, focus, and hearing our partner. We stop feeling safe, and when humans stop feeling safe, we do a few different predictable things.

Dr. Lisa: You’re talking about that physiological fight or flight where all of a sudden, a tense moment in the kitchen, and looking at it from the outside, objectively, nothing terrible is happening, but it feels that way on the inside. Your body starts reacting to it, your brain starts going, and that makes it hard to show up well, being curious.

Matthew: Exactly, and it’s flight, it’s freeze, so that’s shut down. And fun. That sense that you’re talking to a brick wall and fun, which is, and all of those are, those are the things that we’re talking about when we talk about being reactive. Some people are big and loud and reactive, and it’s outward, and you can see it. Some people disappear, some people shut down, and then some people will go ahead and absorb way too much of the stress in that moment, which makes things calm down in the moment, but over time, leads to the kind of resentment that builds and grows and lingers, and all of those ways of experiencing those moments are equally reactive, and something for us not to judge or to remove from our experience, we really can’t do that. What we’re more interested in doing is understanding why this is happening and what it is we can do about it instead.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, yeah. I’m just thinking about my own experience and these moments in my own life, and this is so interesting. I think I probably tend to be that last type that you talked about. I don’t know if it’s a fond response, but I will de-escalate everybody, and let’s everybody calm down, and find a solution and it’s gonna be okay, but you’re right though, there’s not always a closure on my side, I make it better for other people, but then I sometimes not really okay long term. Can I ask what’s your pattern in this? You’re married.

Matthew: I like to notice that we all have some amount of predisposition to different reactions here, and then over the course of a conflict, sometimes we’ll go from one to the other, and we’ll have our most front-facing one, and then eventually a different one can take over.

Dr. Lisa: A multi-day.

Matthew: Oh yeah. Oh boy. It can happen in the blink of an eye, so I would tend to fawn. Initially I’m a fawner.

Dr. Lisa: Is that not the pacify thing, is that fawn? That is fawn. Is that what therapists do in conflict? Did we just land on something? Well, we do. It’s about a research study.

Matthew: See, this stuff gets so weird and indeed really complex, because up at the surface, somebody who fawns is looked at as fine. They’re looked at as not struggling. They’re looked at as doing something that we would all want people to do. Prose and a shot. And the difference between, exactly. The scary thing here and something that’s totally flying under the radar for so many of us as a collective is that appearing fine at the surface is not the same thing as actually feeling fine but being fine. It’s the same exact behavior up at the surface can arise from a different place within yourself. And so this is something for us to all explore and ourselves to recognize. It took me so long to be able to consciously acknowledge to myself and to my partner that I’m not actually fine in those moments. And what would wind up happening before I had a better sense, a better understanding of myself and the practice that I’ve needed is I would fawn and I would appear fine and I would appear calm. And eventually that sort of just, you hit a threshold and that’s when I turn into fight. That’s where I’m gonna go with it. I’m gonna go to a fight place from a fawn place. And that each and every one of us has a pattern that we can recognize in retrospect. The hard thing to do to be able to learn from this stuff is to be in a space in which you’re not gonna be judged for it and which you’re gonna be treated like you’re a human being experiencing something. Human and normal.

Dr. Lisa: I love that. Thank you so much for saying that, Matthew. I mean, we all have our own patterns for good reasons. I mean, we are the way we are for a reason. And there’s not necessarily anything wrong or pathological or bad about anybody’s natural reactions. But I think there are those opportunities to take a look at what am I doing? And is this supporting the type of relationship that I want to have? Or even though I’m handling these things the best I know how to do in the moments, is it contributing to a longer term, not even conflict, but like lack of resolution in some ways? Like, because what you’re talking about is maybe some of the underpinnings of why it quote, always turns into a fight. Of course it does if it was never resolved the last time.

Matthew: Right, exactly. That’s exactly how it goes.

Matthew: The technical term for this is that there’s a homeostasis in your relationship. There’s a thing that happens.

Dr. Lisa: You’re gonna have to define that term because I’ve been out of grad school for a while now, so.

Matthew: So homeostasis is that way that whether you’re talking about the family that you come from or you and your partner, there’s the way that something’s gonna go. We all figure out what’s gonna happen. You know what’s going to get your partner frustrated or upset, you know what’s going to make your partner feel insecure, you know what is going to make, you know the way your conflict cycle is gonna go. You know how it’s gonna start, how it’s gonna escalate, how it’s gonna climax, how it’s gonna come back down, how you’re gonna reconnect, and how then it’s all gonna happen again and again. Couples go through it and they go through it and eventually we get tired. Everybody gets tired and when you keep encountering the same thing over and over, eventually the hopelessness, the frustration with it can get so big that it’s so stressful that it exacerbates the problem and makes it even more intense. Now, us marriage and family therapists recognize the way that stress is always this key activator of that homeostatic thing that’s gonna happen over and over and over.

Dr. Lisa: Right, that people just sort of get like locked in to this very predictable dance that everybody hates, by the way, but that it’s hard to get out of that. Yeah. Mm-hmm, yeah.

Matthew: This is where we wind up looking at each other. I’m always thinking about the beginning of this process with a couple or with an individual if we’re focused on this stuff. As we’re looking at each other as causing it. We’re looking at each other and thinking about our partners exactly. Now, and the hard part here is that we’re all right. Of course we are. We’re all for the most part correct about it. But as one of my therapists said to me once upon a time, he said, “Well, Matt, you can be right or you can be loving.” And that kind of just stopped me in my tracks, you know? Meh.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, and hey, let’s just land here for a sec because I think that this is one of the things that can be so hard for my clients to wrap their brains around. And also for me too, personally, you know, this idea that when it comes to subjective reality, which is what relationships are, by the way, this is not a math problem. This is entirely subjective and also usually complex. And in a relationship, you know, two different people, their life histories, their wiring, their values, their wants, needs, and desires, many different things can all be simultaneously true, like at the same time, so that two people in two different positions in a conflict can both be absolutely, quote, right from their point of view and their perspective and that nobody needs to change or adopt somebody else’s point of view. That is hard, I think, for a lot of people to embrace because it seems like we’re having conflict because of the differences. And if I could bring you over to my side of the line, right, and help you see the world according to me, then everything would be better. Have you noticed that?

Matthew: Oh, of course, that’s like the thing that we’re encountering in our work, isn’t it? the burden of fault on what are called the systems. Marriage and family therapists are trained to think systemically versus individually. And what that means is we’re zooming out and we’re thinking about a whole context of a person’s life, which, think about like a Russian doll, you know, you’re at the center and you belong in these ever-expanding rings of different systems. There’s you inside your family system, inside the region where you grew up and the culture that you grew up in and the religion that you grew up in and the economic status and so on. It gets, we can go on and on and on with this.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah.

Matthew: But what we want to understand is that there is no objective true, correct thing. I mean, if I forget to do something that I was supposed to do, if I, I don’t know, I was supposed to send a thing to school for our kid and I forgot about it, right? And my partner asks me about it and I’m immediately scared because I’ve been noticed for doing something wrong. I’m not just experiencing that moment. Inside my brain and inside my body, I’m already reliving every single moment where somebody’s been mad at me or judged me because I screwed something up.

Dr. Lisa: Unconsciously, like this is not a flood of memories, it is a physical reaction, yeah.

Matthew: It’s like muscle memory, you know? It’s like once upon a time you had to learn to write or brush your teeth or do anything it is you do. That’s the way we work when it comes to our feelings and our reactions as well.

Dr. Lisa: Flexibly defensive, all right.

Matthew: Right, you know, because when I was a kid and I forgot something and somebody yelled at me, that hurt me and it made me feel defensive and I couldn’t speak my mind about it. And so that defense, if that’s happening over and over in your life and I like to call a spade a spade and say we live in a very judgmental society, it’s normal, it’s even looked at as a virtue, but that has a real life impact on us that we get to pay attention to when we do this work. And we get to learn about the way that, yeah, I forgot something and now I’m defensive and I’m perceiving you as judging me. Whether or not you’re judging me, I’m already perceiving you as judging me. I have to tell it. So I’m defending myself. My brain and my body know that you are passing judgment on me right now and so I’m angry about it. How dare you? I’m mad at you. How dare you do that to me? You can’t judge me like that. You screw things up too sometimes and I don’t say anything about it, right? So then my partner though is experiencing, oh, did you do that thing? It’s just a question. And now I’m mad at you and I’m blaming you for being mad. It’s your fault I’m mad. And now my partner’s mad because they just experienced this totally other thing and now we’re like, we’re missing each other. We’re not connecting up.

Dr. Lisa: Right, she’s like, did you fill out the form? And there’s this flood of irrational hostility and she’s like, what is happening right now? But then of course, why are you talking to me this way? Why is it so hard? I just asked you a question. Oh my gosh, how many of us have heard that, right? I know, it’s wild.

Matthew: Oh my goodness, it’s so frustrating because— It’s so fast. And my partner might be feeling scared that the teachers are judging us because we didn’t send in the thing.

Dr. Lisa: I struggle with that as well. I think they probably are. I have decided, yeah.

Matthew: They might be, they might be. And that truth, whether or not that’s true is a moot point. It probably is true, let’s face it. But it’s a moot point because my partner’s scared. But I’m reading frustration because again, none of us ever, for the most part, really got to look at these things and understand these things while we were growing up.

Dr. Lisa: I love this example because this is such a simple thing but you are both 12 dimensional people, right? I mean, in this moment and have so many individual like histories and reactions and assumptions and judgments and all this stuff happening inside of each of you which is so complex. And then there’s the intersection of what’s going on in the reactions to each other’s reactions. Even if in the moment is like, I asked you if you filled out the form and now I don’t like your tone. That’s like what is happening on the most superficial level but wow, these roots go deep.

Matthew: I like to look at things when we’re working in this space as what’s showing up for you right now in that reaction. It’s not wrong or bad. It is a barrier to your connection. Right now in the moment and in the future, that reaction is a barrier to your connection. But that’s not saying that we need to pass judgment on it because the thing is that reaction is just telling us something true about how you’ve experienced life and relationships. But what we haven’t gotten, when we haven’t gotten to do what I call, let’s put that where it belongs or let’s take that home sometimes if we’re talking about a home environment. What we’re doing is we’re feeling something really intense but it’s disconnected from the actual experiences in which that feeling took root in you and that reaction, that defense took root in you. Until we get to take a look at these things in order to get out of this cycle because we’ve come to this space and we’re so frustrated and we just want it all to stop and go away and we’re confused and despairing. When we can put that feeling where it belongs, suddenly we’re gonna have a totally different understanding of what’s happening when your partner says, “Hey, did you do that thing and you didn’t?” And boom, your body goes into a fear mode. Your body goes into self-defense mode. We learned to recognize that and put those feelings where they belong so that we can stop throwing gasoline on the fire. That is, well, you just asked me a question. I got scared and defensive about it. I blamed you for that. You got defensive. And now we’re both just defending ourselves at each other which makes us feel even more disconnected.

Dr. Lisa: Absolutely. I loved the way you were just mapping out what is really going on when people get stuck in these conflict cycles in a relationship. There are all these unconscious reactions that we all engage in, whether we like it or not, I mean, we just do. And then how it can turn into this very perpetual dance that couples just do together and it can feel so darn hard to get out of this conflict cycle because the roots go so deep. And I loved the way that you explained all of that to us. That was great. And just before we took the break, I had asked you if on the other side we could talk a little bit more about how to begin understanding what’s going on inside of you in these moments because I think that our natural tendency, this is true for me, if maybe it’s true for you. Well, I don’t know. You’ve done so much work on yourself. Maybe you’ve transcended all of this, but I think the natural reaction is to really get focused on what your partner is doing or not doing, what they’re saying, what they’re doing, how they’re coming at you, right? And not anything about, oh, what’s going on inside of me right now? So how do we start to change that?

Matthew: We begin with noticing. For the beginning of any relationship that I have a couple or an individual, the focus at the beginning is always going to be setting an intention. So we’re being very purposeful here. This requires, like we can choose to be intentional. We can’t choose to do the thing every time, but we can choose to notice the thing when it happens. So we’re setting realistic expectations for ourself. And what I ask people to do is take a look at what’s happening in your body. There’s discomfort in your body. It might be in your shoulders, it might be in your jaw. You might be clenching, your muscles somewhere. You might be flushed, you might be pacing. You might be gesticulating wildly with your hands. Whatever it might be, there’s something that we can notice about your body. So we’re noticing what we’re feeling in our bodies. We’re noticing what we’re paying attention to. Attention itself is a huge, huge source of information while we’re doing this work. So the question would be like, when your partner asked you that question, where did your attention go? Because again, our intentions, in a situation like this, and this is a real life example, by the way, this is the kind of thing that has happened so many times between me and my partner.

Dr. Lisa: Tell this story. I’ll tell my stories too, it’s fine. It’s just us.

Matthew: So once upon a time, I let the registration on one of our cars expire. Okay, this is a while back.

Dr. Lisa: I’m not good at mail. I hate mail, I hate everything about it, okay.

Matthew: You know, this is stuff like that. I struggle with it for sure. But then no big deal except that the day after Christmas, our car got stolen out of our driveway. And that is how the registration expiring came to be an issue. Because when your car has been stolen and recovered and it’s in an impound blot, you need a registration to reclaim your vehicle. I know, it’s just like, are you kidding me? Like, oh, I’m a walking face palm. Oh my goodness. So at that point, I’m not paying attention to the fact that this is very distressing for my partner. My partner is upset. I mean, naturally, somebody’s gonna be upset. I said I was going to do that. I did not do that in a timely manner. It expired. And something happened that I didn’t control. Our car was stolen. Okay, that sucks. But now what’s happening is I’m in a place of defense because your upset is making me feel really, really guilty. Yeah. Okay. So my attention is not on connecting to my partner. My attention is not on saying, I get why you’re upset. Like, I dropped the ball on that. Simply acknowledging something. My attention is on self defense. And again, I could go down a huge rabbit hole of talking about why. But for the sake of this conversation, I’m noticing that my attention is not on connecting to my partner in that moment. I’m noticing that my attention is on defending that I’m not bad or I’m not worthy of judgment about this. Yeah. At which point my partner is feeling upset because there’s not room for her to feel feelings in this situation. If she feels upset or she feels scared about things, she doesn’t have my compassion. She doesn’t have my understanding. She has an angry husband that’s mad at her for feeling big feelings because I’m too guilty about what I did and I’m feeling frustrated that she’s judging me about it.

Dr. Lisa: Right.

Matthew: Okay.

Dr. Lisa: That makes perfect sense.

Matthew: And when it’s happening, I’m sick in my stomach. When it’s happening, I’m starting to pace a lot. That’s one of my big indicators that I’m starting to go where I don’t want to go.

Dr. Lisa: But that physiological agitation, that movement.

Matthew: My hands feel buzzy. I can sort of feel that energy, which as it turns out, is probably adrenaline. My body is literally preparing to fight because there’s no difference for your nervous system between a predator stalking you and your wife who’s upset at you. It is that simple. Your body goes into survival mode. I’m noticing that about myself. So I’ve got what’s happening in my body, sick to my stomach, I’m buzzing, I’m pacing, I’m getting agitated physically, visibly, and I’m not really paying attention to that. My attention is on her judging me and knowing that she’s judging me and knowing that that’s mean and she shouldn’t, even though she’s just kind of freaked out about the situation.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah.

Matthew: What am I thinking? That’s another thing I’m paying attention to. We call this narrative. What’s the story I’m assigning to what’s happening right now? Because there’s a story and that story is a part of the homeostasis that we were talking about a little while ago in a conflict cycle. I’m interpreting something with a story that is not actually happening right now, but I am thinking is happening right now. Okay, so we’ve got what’s happening in my body, where’s my attention, what’s happening in my thinking, and what we’re not noticing is that we’re feeling stuff in these moments. I’m feeling guilty, I’m feeling ashamed of myself, I’m feeling irresponsible, I’m feeling disconnected from my partner, so I’m alone, I’m scared, I’m all these things, but she’s not seeing any of that and for a long time I didn’t have the words to describe that. I just looked angry at the surface. I was, I was angry.

Dr. Lisa: Well, I think that’s so true for so many of us, right? Like we have all of this complexity, like coming alive inside of us that we are not connected to, we’re not consciously aware of it, and our partners have no idea because on the outside we seem a different way, it’s like obscuring the reality and that the same thing is happening inside of her at the same time and it’s just this like, there’s no access to each other’s deeper experience.

Matthew: We can’t go like this, just miss each other.

Dr. Lisa: Right, thank you so much for sharing this story and I just wanna, like this is so relatable. I mean, even though I think we all have different ways of handling these moments, this is what happens to every single one of us. yeah, probably have all those same experiences but like go into make it better, like solve the problem, like disconnect. I don’t know, I think I probably have more point tendencies, I’m not gonna like engage and get mad but I’ll probably like shut down a little bit is probably my reaction to these kinds of things which is equally as hard, right? Because then it’s like the conversation just stops and that isn’t cool either. And so for all of our friends who are here with us, maybe this is a moment just to sit and think about, well, the last time you had a tough moment in your relationship, what was really going on inside of you? What was your reaction? What were your feelings? What was your physiological response? What story did you start telling yourself? What did you do? And how did that maybe contribute to this lack of attunement that you’re talking about? I don’t know, if we were to give our friends like even a journaling prompt or two, it’s like, well, hold on, is that what you would do with this? Or I mean, this is so darn experiential. And one of the things that I’ve struggled with so many times, like even on this podcast, Matthew, just to be completely honest with you, I think that people like want to know what to do and I absolutely want to give them actionable things like here’s some journaling prompts or whatever. But I think that you and I also know that a lot of this, it’s not informational, it is experiential. And so that’s what I’m trying to crack into is like how could somebody help themselves have the experience that would give them visibility into this in the wild, so to speak? Or is this really why somebody needs to come in and talk to someone just like you to help them have that experience in a productive environment that actually changes their understanding of themselves and their partner? Because that’s not something that we can tell, you know what I mean? It’s something that you have to do. I know that’s a really big question and it might be unfair to you, but I’m curious.

Matthew: Not at all. It’s absolutely on point because you’re right, the information itself is not everything. I remember being at a point in my own growth process where I thought that understanding these things would change how I react. And it’s a necessary stair step to get there, but it’s not the there that we’re trying to get to.

Matthew: The reason we come into a space that you hold and that I’m facilitating is because what we have learned to do, what we’ve been trained in is how to attune. You mentioned that word attunement a moment ago. And in a nutshell, what attunement is, it’s what it feels like to be heard in a way that is so clear that you’re being understood accurately in a way that resonates with you. And the person listening to you isn’t squirmy about it. They’re not trying to fix your problem right away. They’re not trying to tell you to look on the bright side or they’re not giving you a hot take based on what they think. They’re genuinely glad to be listening to you and understanding you while they also have confidence in you that it’s gonna be okay. This is normal, this is natural. We’re alike. I share this experience. I know that you can figure out what to do with this. I know that you can do this. And that is just simply so different than when I look out at the world and I look at my own experiences and I hear people talk to me about their experiences. That’s hard to come by. It’s really hard to come by. It’s rare. And it’s a human need. We call that a human need. You need food, water, shelter, clothing. You need attunement to be able to experience wellbeing. And it’s something, when we experience it, it becomes a part of us. It’s like we can think about it like getting charged up like a battery, right? So we need that source that when we’re getting depleted or when we’re having a hard time, I know that I can go to you and get charged back up. I’m not blaming your parents, okay? I’m not blaming anybody’s parents. And? And I’m not blaming my parents or my wife’s or anybody’s. As always, the problem, the only fault that exists in this space is in the way the systems run, in the way things collectively are done. That’s where the problem is, not inside you. You’re suffering from the way things are done. It’s not your fault. But you are empowered and that’s what accountability is. You are empowered to learn how to do something differently. So we come to a space like this because what you can do is attune to you and we can begin from a place of, what I love about couples is that you can’t hide from me. You can’t. You’re just sitting in front of me.

Dr. Lisa: Absolutely not. Individual therapy, like people can hide even from us, but not couples.

Matthew: But couples know your partner says that thing or expresses that perspective or does that gesture. And I’m gonna see your side eye or I’m gonna see your, I’m gonna watch you get sort of like yanked into something and that’s gonna give us so much helpful information. And when that happens, I’m not gonna be like, hey, what’s wrong with you? And I’m not gonna chastise you. I’m gonna take it as a moment that we can learn from and say, oh, I noticed that when your partner says that or does that or whatever it might be, I noticed that something big comes up in you and I wonder if we can take a look at that. And I’m gonna do so in a way that, well, I’m a human so I might not get it perfect all the time, but if I don’t get it right, I’m going to take accountability for that myself. And I’m gonna say, you’re right. I was a little, I was a little harsh. I was a little pushier. I was a little impatient with you there. But ultimately what we’re going for is, oh, there’s something that needs to be understood about you as a human being who’s lived in the positions you’ve lived in your life, who’s gone through what you’ve gone through in life, who to some extent you’ve got your needs met like being connected, feeling somebody’s attuned presence with you and to some extent not. And that’s why that’s happening for you, not because you’re angry as a person, not because you’re impatient or because people come in and they say like, I’m scared that I’m not empathic or something like that. I’m scared that I’m really emotionally immature or I need to work on that. And they think this is me, this is what I am, which is what we call the fixed mindset. What we’re going for here is the growth mindset, which is, no, that doesn’t define you that this reaction comes up. You’re completely understandable that that comes up for you. Let’s notice it when it comes up for you so that you can learn to be the one who understands in the moment. Because that’s the thing, when I’m defensive, like I was talking about after the car got stolen at the expired registration, I am feeling a lifetime of messing stuff up and having people be angry at me about it or having people question me about it or what’s wrong with you? Like, why can’t you just, that question that everybody’s heard, why can’t you just? So when I feel those big feelings, if I don’t know that there’s a reason that’s so much bigger and so much older than this relationship, I’m gonna say it’s your fault that I feel this way, you’re making me feel this way. And in a space like we can access here, what we get to do is say, oh, this feeling comes up for me when you, and that’s a totally different way of understanding it. That puts us in a completely different way of thinking about what’s happening and it opens up this whole range of ways of interacting then that we just didn’t know existed before because we never experienced them.

Dr. Lisa: You were talking about just how so much becomes possible when you can get visibility into yourself, take accountability for that, totally change the experience everybody is having I’m having my like fawning, gotta get out of here stuff triggered right now and I need to calm down and stay in the ring with you and owning that as opposed to, you’re making me feel a certain way, you’re a bad person because you’re not handling it XYZ, like going into your own judgment and what we can do with this.

Dr. Lisa: So I wanna continue, before we do though, I’m noticing that a word has come up so many times over our conversation and that is the word judgment and you’ve talked about how this is frequently a character at the party when conflict is happening and you also said something that I thought was so intriguing, it was a little while ago in our conversation but that it was judgment is virtuous in our culture and I was like, what does he mean by that? So can you just tell us your perspective about judgment and how it impacts these situations and what we could do with it?

Matthew: Absolutely, well, judgment is a norm, we all judge, right? I mean, in this day and age, you see a video online of somebody’s worst moment and you say that’s what that person is and oh my God, how could they?

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, that attribution theory, right?

Matthew: Exactly and we come, so many of us come from legacies in which judgment and punishment are looked at as necessary ways to teach you how to not be bad. You are bad, I’m going to punish you, I’m going to judge the badness to help you not be bad anymore. It’s important that you know this bad thing about yourself so that you can knock it off, so that you can be good. And what’s missing here, like the way we look at kids throwing a tantrum is bad behavior and we make sure that they know that that’s bad and I know that that’s bad but what’s happening for the kid is I don’t have the part of my brain that prevents me. I’m having a feeling, right? Like my little five year old when she, let’s see, she wanted to wear something to school this morning that she could not wear to school just functionally, it just wouldn’t work.

Dr. Lisa: Dinosaur costume, I get it, I have eight year olds. They have ideas, it’s great.

Matthew: Yes, yes and she was really angry, she was really, really angry about that but a five year old, the part of the brain that prevents you from doing something impulsive does not exist for the five year old yet. It’s called your prefrontal cortex, it’s your executive brain, it doesn’t exist but people don’t know that. People think the kids are little mini adults and you should be able to not freak out but the kid’s just having a feeling. The kid’s just learning what feelings are. The kid doesn’t understand, she can’t say to me, Dada, you know, I’m really upset with you because I really wanted to wear that dress and you wouldn’t let me wear that dress and I’m feeling really sad and confused and disappointed about that. My daughter can’t say that to me.

Dr. Lisa: Most 40 year olds can’t say that, it’s like, right?

Matthew: I’m the work in progress on that. And so it’s my job as the parent to help her understand that. It’s my job as a parent to know, oh, my kid is having a really big feeling, this might be the first time she’s feeling this really big feeling. And it’s my job to know that when she is lashing out about it or freaking out or throwing a tantrum because I put the flower for the pancakes in the bowl and she wanted to do it or something like that, that’s not a kid being bad, that’s not a bad child. And what we typically do with that is we punish it to try to make it go away. Oftentimes we’ll separate the child from us, you know? No, you’re going into time out right now. Again, I’m not judging you parent out there for doing that because I know that we all learn to do that. I have that same impulse. That was the prevailing wisdom, has been the prevailing wisdom for a long time. So judgment is looked at as a necessary thing to help people grow. What we understand as therapists and as coaches, is that judgment doesn’t do anything for anybody except lock us deeper and deeper and deeper into the same patterns.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah.

Matthew: There’s this wonderful, brilliant thinker and clinician from a long time ago who created person-centered therapy and it’s thanks to Carl Rogers. And he said, “When I accept myself as I am, then I can change.” And we don’t just accept ourselves. The human need is to be accepted by other people. We need to know that we are seen with accuracy. Yeah, I freaked out there. The kid freaked out, “Oh, you’re having a hard time right now. Let me understand you. Oh, and now I’m going to teach you.” And no, it’s not going to prevent the next tantrum, but it is going to create a grownup that knows how to say, “Hey, it hurt my feelings when you said that.”

Dr. Lisa: Oh, so good. Wow. And I mean, just to expand on this a little bit, like how amazing to be in a relationship with somebody who has that kind of accepting, curious attitude. I’m also just thinking like my experience growing up, I think was probably a bit different than normal conventional gender norms in a lot of ways, which I’m glad for. It’s created other problems, right? But like, for example, my mom was incredibly emotionally attuned emotionally. So I never got in trouble for having feelings ever. And I think I was able to carry some of that forward into my own family. And so like I have other issues. It’s not like it was perfect by any means, but like I’m thinking this past weekend, even my eight year old, we were at the pumpkin patch and she wanted something. And my first response to her question was, “No, I think it was she wanted some toy from the gift shop.” I was like, “You have about eight of those in your bedroom right now. No, we’re not spending $20 to get you another one.” And she came back with like a plan. She like got tickets and was like, “Listen, this is how this is going to work.” And I think that it can be, like we all have these choices in these moments, right? To feel frustrated of like this relentless kid. I said no, and now she’s like continuing to campaign for this and coming back in with all these other perspectives. idea that there’s really light and dark in all things. And in that moment, I was like, “You know what? I really appreciate your tenacity. You are a strategic problem solver. You have a lot of confidence and you believe in your own ability to like get what you want.” And I actually said that out loud to her and I was like, “Good job.” And she just had this like, “Yeah, I am.” And I was like, “Like back to what you were saying, like that is the adult that I want to send forth in the world is this like confident woman who can figure stuff out and advocate for herself.” And I think that when we could take this type of attitude, even with ourselves and like, how does this make sense? What is the function of this? How do we actually use this in a way and like in an accepting way? And of course we can look at the outcome. Is this really getting me what I want? If not, why not? You know, I have the agency to change certainly. But going back to that acceptance idea, it’s really powerful. And we all have those choices in the moment. Or like, do we judge and punish or do we like, like maybe it’s okay.

Matthew: So many people don’t feel like it’s a choice and the determining actor here, Lisa, that was mom’s state of being. Mom’s state of being.

Dr. Lisa: I know, but I get criticized though for being too permissive. Right?

Matthew: Because that’s the norm. Because that’s the norm, right? You know? And systems don’t exist. There’s not like a building that’s called like the system. And like, there’s like a nefarious bunch of people operating in the system.

Dr. Lisa: The Illuminati, maybe that’s what they’re doing.

Matthew: Maybe, hey, I mean. Who knows? I don’t know. But the system lives in us. And when anybody does something different from what the systems teach us and expect, everybody else gets nervous. If you don’t, if you’re not hardline with your kid there and other people have learned that that’s the thing to do, they’re now feeling this discomfort about you doing something like that, right? Oh, you know, this is going to create whatever blah, blah, blah entitlement. But it hides in plain sight. You just said, you showed us your daughter saying, I am, right? This is identity that you’re building here. You showed her that she’s capable of hearing a no, of thinking it through, making a plan, communicating her plan, changing a mind.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah.

Matthew: And she didn’t have to melt down or throw a tantrum about it. That’s because she knows that mom’s listening. That’s because she knows that mom is open to her and can change her mind. And mom’s not going to see me as spoiled. Mom’s not going to see me in any kind of judgmental way. And that made, do we want our kids like, do we want our kids? Totally.

Dr. Lisa: No, I mean, like how many people do we work with as therapists and coaches who really struggle with confidence in themselves, belief in their ability to influence others, right? Agency over what happens in their lives. And it’s this words, I know I’m not trying to put myself on a pedestal. Like, I mean, I make all kinds of parenting mistakes, but I think going back to how we handle what is coming at us emotionally from other people.

Dr. Lisa: But Matthew, I know that I don’t have all the time in the world with you, sadly, although I’m already plotting to have you back on the show again, because you are amazing and I love it so much. But before we end, I really want to hear your thoughts going back to this idea of a system and the particularly like gender norms that not everyone, but many people are raised in and how that influences, you know, how we show up or what we expect from others. And in particular, what it can do to men. And I have to tell you, and this is just, I don’t know what to do with this, Matthew. I have so many times on this podcast, actually, I’ll have like people come on the show and they’re great. Like I would not do this with anyone who I didn’t like and value and they have great ideas. But one of the patterns that I’ve noticed over the last couple of years, in a more intense way, are people coming in wanting to talk about who and what men are and how that impacts women with women being the main character of this movie, having to deal with these men who are showing up in this monolithic way, you know, sort of obtuse, selfish, irresponsible, putting the burden of everything on women. And so I’m always like gonna advocate for the male perspective and experience in these conversations because yes, selfish, self-absorbed men exist and selfish and self-absorbed women also exist. And all of the men that I know in my personal life, including you, Matthew, you are such a deep, thoughtful, emotionally aware, sensitive person. And like, how do you cope with that narrative, first of all? And how do you try to support men who might be in these relationships where there’s this core belief about who they are and what they are capable of that is just not true, but is fostered by our culture?

Matthew: This is where I think judgment subject in our conversation, because in a nutshell, what we’ve all been taught is that if somebody’s having a hard time, somebody’s at fault. If somebody’s feeling feelings, somebody’s at fault. There’s always got to be a focal point for blame in the situation.

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, that something’s wrong, right? And yeah.

Matthew: Yes, and you are selfish. Now, again, back to complexity, there are levels on which that’s true, right? Yeah. I’ve worked with couples that they both work. You know, both parents are working. They’ve got one or two or three little kids. And then on Saturday, it doesn’t occur to dad that going and playing 18 rounds of golf is burdensome for his partner, right? That is selfish behavior. But why does that selfish behavior exist? And why is it that when we try to talk about it, defense is what comes up about it, right? And the problem is men have been deprived of attunement. Men have not been on the receiving end of softness and gentleness and people who are ready to say, “Hey, you had big feelings there. You had a big reaction. What’s going on there?” When you think about what’s out there in the popular wisdom or ways of thinking about men, what are men? Well, women are emotional and men are logical, right? And men, what are expectations of men that we’re stoic, that we’re consistent, that we don’t have feelings, that we are in some way, shape or form fundamentally different than women and we’re not. There’s some obvious differences between men and women, but when it comes to our emotional needs, there’s no difference whatsoever between men and women.

Dr. Lisa: Emotional capability and capacity.

Matthew: Exactly. And this is where in the nature nurture kind of debate, we’ve got a massive amount of nurture as a problem that men are afflicted with. And because that’s the case, because we’re talking about a denial of the meaning of men’s emotional needs, I’m not saying that’s mutually exclusive as in women have had their emotional needs met and men haven’t. I’m saying nobody has, but there’s been an imbalance in which women are expected to patch that over, smooth that over for men. And if they don’t, they are subject to a man’s reaction and they caused the man’s reaction. We should know better than to expect this at the man. We should work around the man’s reactions, work around the man’s feelings. And that is a form of being victimized. And men everywhere know it and feel it, but they’re also reacting to it. They don’t know how to put words to it. And they certainly don’t know what to do instead.

Dr. Lisa: Are you saying like the woman in the story would be being victimized or the man because of being- I’m saying everybody. Everybody, okay. Like we’re all kind of being influenced by these messages, narratives, forces in a way that’s not good for anybody in that story.

Matthew: Yeah. We’re all being set up for failure. I mean, if, what do we say to little boys? Stop crying, toughen up, man up, all these things that every single man heard, has heard in his life. Every single man has witnessed other men talking to men that way. Women have learned to talk this way to little boys and growing young men. Boys will be boys, right? We don’t treat men as if they are capable of this. And then we fall in love.

Dr. Lisa: Get mad at them when they’re not.

Matthew: And then men have no idea what to do. It’s like, how do I describe to you what it’s like to go skydiving until you’ve done it? I can’t describe, you just have to know what it’s like. What’s it like to get drunk for the first time before you’ve been drunk? I can’t really describe that to you. So men are set up for failure. So are women. Again, it’s not at the exclusion of, it’s just everybody. And then when stuff gets real, you get married, you get more responsibilities, your career’s growing, you have kids. And now you didn’t learn growing up that, in my case, when there’s a kid’s birthday party this weekend, somebody needs to buy a present, right? Somebody needs to buy a present for that kid’s birthday party.

Dr. Lisa: Or a gift card from a gas station, just saying, like, we make it work. Just on the way, running.

Matthew: I mean, I try not to have four year olds gift cards.

Dr. Lisa: Gas stations have all kinds of stuff, man.

Matthew: Oh, that’s true, that’s true. They don’t have gift bags a lot of the time. That’s true, yeah. But somebody’s gotta do that. And that didn’t occur to that man because nobody ever expected that man to do that, right? But then for that man’s partner, if she’s already thinking through a bajillion things about that kid’s schedule and doctor’s appointments and everything, sometimes it’s gonna be, there’s gonna be that, and like, somebody needed to think about this. And that man’s over here thinking, why aren’t you so mad at me all the time? Why don’t you just get mad at me about stuff? And she’s over here thinking, she has no idea what I do all day every day. She has no idea what’s on my mind all the time.

Dr. Lisa: It’s the internal experience. But I will also just say, yes, that I think in our culture, women can definitely occupy that space. But I think that is also a structural thing in the hypothetical family of having one person who has a real big job and who is maybe the primary breadwinner and the other person really is more of the, in that caretaker role. And I think even more commonly these days, that is not necessarily the man in the, like I know that that’s not the dynamic at your house, your wife is a physician, I think at my house, my husband is more the caretaker. Wonderful colleagues, Silas from Growing Self, he came on and talked about that. He’s with an emergency room doc and he is the one making dinner. And so I think it’s like that, who’s keeping the wheels on the bus experience that many times in our culture does fall to women, but not always. And I just wanna also say that out loud, that this is not a, carved into the marble tablets way it is.

Matthew: And that’s exactly how it goes in my family as well, between me and my wife. There’s everything that’s on her mind that she’s dealing with, that she’s attending to. There’s everything that’s on my mind that I’m thinking about, I’m thinking about what’s for lunch for our kids today and what’s for dinner and getting up in the morning with them. Do we have clean laundry and all kinds of stuff that’s on my mind? And there’s still not, there’s still all this stuff that I’m gonna miss all the time. And the hazard here is that basically, we’ve all got too much responsibility right now. So much is expected of us. When I was a kid growing up, it was like, you go outside and you play all day, but now parents have to be very involved and everything is scheduled and it’s a whole different world these days. So when I’m stressed and tired and depleted, because our kids were up all night and I’ve been sleeping terribly for five years because I have two tiny kids and my wife is exactly that stressed. And we’re both that stressed at that exact same time. That’s the perfect environment or whatever the opposite of that. That’s exactly when it’s gonna happen. That if she’s overwhelmed for a second and frustrated about something, I’m immediately in that place of like, well, you don’t see me either. A common example would be if a man has that big job and he’s really stressed about it and he’s worried about it all the time. Or women. And he’s anybody.

Dr. Lisa: Well, I’m just thinking about men now.

Matthew: I’m thinking about the way that men are totally unprepared and hamstrung, but you’re absolutely right. There’s no fixed way that these gender roles play out in relationships. It can be any of the above. But what’s happening here is that he’s worried and that’s occupying attention. And what he’s not noticing or what she’s not noticing while their attention is occupied in the worry outside the home is that there’s all this stuff happening all the time. And partners wind up feeling really lonely and really sad and really scared and really overwhelmed and overburdened with things. And so then if there’s any drop of frustration expressed, everybody winds up completely on the defensive right away. You don’t see me and what I’m dealing with. And that’s what we do because now I’m feeling again, judgment, I’m feeling you blaming me for why you’re so upset, right? And my attention’s not with you. It’s not caring about you. It’s not understanding you anymore. My attention is on defending myself against the accusation that I am at fault for why you feel so bad right now. And then that’s just gonna hurt. Everybody’s gonna hurt and everybody’s gonna feel scared and nobody’s gonna know what to do about it. For a sec, can I speak to what we can do about it? Because I don’t wanna leave people with nothing action.

Dr. Lisa: I mean, this has been just such a masterclass, honestly. And I love the empathy and the compassion that you have here for everyone involved. And I know that we need to wrap this up soon, but I would love to hear your thoughts, even some easy takeaways. And first of all, first and foremost, the one big, big takeaway that I think we talked a lot about is to get awareness of yourself and to be able to understand your own reactions, make sense of them yourself, so that you can articulate them to someone else. And that I think is huge. So thank you for teaching us that. What else would you want to recommend or leave people with as like, here’s some things you might wanna try differently?

Matthew: Well, so if you notice yourself defending yourself, you’re disconnecting, you’re disconnecting each other. Any amount of defense that shows up is something that I myself am capable of recognizing. I myself am capable of making a different choice in the moment. I’m not saying it’s easy or naturally fluid for when we get started in this to make that choice. I’m saying I can. When I talk about accountability with a couple or an individual that I’m working with, I’m not saying you’re accountable for this because you’re at fault for this. I’m saying you’re accountable for this in the sense that you’re empowered to do this different thing right now. As a coach, I’m most heavily guided by values-based coaching. Because values are like, they’re like a compass for us or a lighthouse. They’re a thing for me to follow when the game speeds up on me, so to speak, right? When things are getting intense. I’ve gotten the opportunity to explore those values in a space like this with an attuned presence. And something that I’ve landed on is a value of mine that I’m constantly referring back to is how I act based on how you act. Is my functioning contingent on your functioning?

Dr. Lisa: Yeah, you’re doing a meshment thing that I need you to be a certain way so I can be a certain way.

Matthew: You got angry at me, so I got angry at you, right? You started getting escalated, so I escalated too. That way that if you’re going up, I’m going up too. That doesn’t align with my values. It definitely shows up in my reactivity, but that’s something that I have that I can watch, that I can be aware of to see myself. If my partner is upset and I’m upset too, the question I’m always asking myself is, does that match with my values? Does that match with my values? Oh, okay. And I can see it now. I didn’t used to be able to see it, but now I can see it when it’s happening. And it allows me an opportunity to stop, to pause, to say to my partner, I just started getting upset with you and I made it your fault, right? I see it. It’s so good. I’m sorry about that. And I’m not shaming myself. I’m not putting myself down. I’m not accepting globally that our conflict is my fault. I’m recognizing, oh, I wound up in my disempowered position. And the disempowered position is the one where if you get upset or raise your voice a little bit, I’m meeting that energy exactly in the same way. That’s me disempowered. Is how I act in the world based on how somebody acts towards me and my answer, my value set is no. No, I am wholly accountable for how I interact with you. Do I choose to judge you for being upset or do I choose to understand that you are a stressed out person who’s been through what you’ve been through, who’s exhausted, who just worked an overnight shift, dealing with like, she’s a newborn intensive care specialist. So she’ll be up all night dealing with some sort of situation with a 25 week Bremie that I can’t even begin to fathom. And if I’m not mindful, if I’m not in my values, I’m just gonna take that as like, can’t you speak to me less angrily? Cause it disturbs me when you sound angry. And that’s a judgment that I’m passing on my wife. So I get to watch myself act in a way that I’m okay with, in alignment with my values or in a way that I’m not. I am then able, if I’m not in alignment with my values, I’m able to say to my partner, I don’t like the way I reacted to you. I made that your fault. That was not your fault. That’s on me. I’m sorry about that. And here’s the thing that happens when we can do that. Once I started doing that, it was kind of amazing. I remember the very first time I ever did that with my partner. We were probably like a year or so into our marriage. So this took a while. Like I wasn’t even there yet when we got married. Almost nine years now. Why are you being weird right now? I was like confused. It like stopped her in her back since she didn’t know what to do with it. But what winds up happening is your partner feels safer. And when your partner feels safer, because you just saw something they’ve been seeing you do the entire time. And now we’re not missing each other anymore. Now we’re squaring those realities. We’re linking up. I’m acknowledging to you, right. I do get defensive if you get upset. I do blame you as if it’s your fault for feeling feelings that I got angry at you. Oh, okay. I see that. So she feels safer and guess what that means? She’s less reactive with me. And guess what that means? I’m less reactive with her. And what all that gives us is the good stuff. We tend to like our spouse beneath all this stuff, right? We got together for a reason. We’re friends. We laugh more now. We’re connected more. The hard moments aren’t so scary because I don’t feel so disempowered anymore. And it’s easy. I’m not betraying myself. I’m just sussing out my values and I’m staying in accordance with my values. Or if I leave, I’m just coming back. That’s all. I learned to come back and come back. So that’s what we can do.

Dr. Lisa: Matthew, that’s so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. I mean, it’s really so inspiring. And it takes effort, I think, to get to the place where you are able to be so self-aware and also so deeply connected to values so that you’re able to just make a choice in every moment. Like I get to decide who I want to be and how I want to show up no matter what is happening around me and to have that level of control and self-mastery. And I just want to say that out loud. For all of our friends who are listening, this is not a switch that you flip on. You’re not gonna listen to this podcast and be like, “Oh, okay, got it.” This is years of, maybe not years. Honestly, in coaching, I think we can get there a lot more quickly because we can help people have the experience and then just be like, “Here’s what to practice.” So I think that there’s that. This has just been so beautiful. And Matthew, thank you so much for spending this time with us today. You are just so gifted in all of this. And will you promise me right now that we’ll do this again sometime, have you back on? We’ll talk about another facet of relationships. But I know I can’t keep you forever, but this was so good.

Matthew: Thank you, Lisa. It’s just been so fun. And I could talk about this stuff all day every day. I do talk about this stuff all day every day. So I’d love to come back, thank you.

Dr. Lisa: We’ll do it soon. Okay, you guys, so my colleague Matthew Caplan, he’s a marriage and family therapist, board certified coach. And if you would like to do this work with Matthew, that’s what he does. And schedule just a free consultation with him. Just say hi, meet him, a little bit about you, what’s going on in your life, what you might like to work on, and see if it feels like a good fit. And if it is, you can move forward. If not, Matthew, I’m sure you’d be very generous with your recommendations about what else to do.

Matthew: So thank you. Always.

Dr. Lisa: So guys, thanks again so much for tuning into this episode of Love, Happiness, and Success. And we are gonna do this again very soon. And thanks for listening. Oh, and lastly, if you had anybody else in your life, in your mind today, as Matthew and I were talking, and you had those moments where you were like, “Oh, I wish so-and-so was hearing this. This is exactly what…” club based on the podcast. We value that. And that’s also part of this mission, is that we’re trying to put these ideas into the world so that other people can use them in their lives. And so thank you for being part of the light.