My Man Was Defensive. Here’s What Made Him Feel Safe Enough to Change.
Graham was defensive and reactive when we met. Today, he is a deeply safe space for me. A woman asked how on earth that happened—and what role I played in it.
“Did you experience Graham being defensive? Did he heal? If so, how on earth did he open himself up to the healing process—and what role did you play in that?”
Yes. He was very defensive and reactive when we met. He is now a very safe space.
Jenn asked if I’d explain what she did that made it literally impossible for me to avoid going to work on myself—so I could show up in a way that made her feel completely safe without giving up my masculinity in the process.
She was a scientist, not a lawyer
Jenn has always been curious.
Her energy assumed the best about me and worked to understand why some things that felt hurtful to her were part of the natural state of masculinity.
She came to me with a genuine desire to understand my experience. Her curiosity made honesty feel safe.
Builds a case, presents the evidence, proves the harm, and pushes for a guilty verdict.
Assumes there may be a reasonable explanation and becomes curious about what actually happened inside him.
Curiosity gave me room to tell the truth. Her faith in my character made me want to live up to it.
She kept ownership of her feelings
A more accurate statement may be that I refused to accept responsibility for managing them.
Nice Guys—and most men these days are doing their very best to be nice—often implode their relationships by accepting a responsibility they can never fulfill.
I accept that what I do impacts how Jenn feels. I listen while she explains that impact. Then we have a real conversation about her sensitivity relative to my masculinity.
How did couples handle this kind of difference for thousands of years? Is there something reasonable I can do? Which part comes from her triggers and trauma? Which part belongs to me?
The 90% and the 10%
Ninety percent of what women find uncomfortable about men is simply men being men.
That part calls for awareness. Two radically different people live under one roof, with fundamentally different biological approaches to life. Friction comes with the territory.
Masculine instincts, different priorities, honest mistakes, and normal differences between the way men and women move through life.
Selfishness, carelessness, avoidance, or behaviour that genuinely requires ownership, repair, and change.
The worst thing a woman can do is accuse a man of hurting her when the issue sits inside that 90%—his ordinary human male nature.
The best thing she can do is what Jenn did: preprocess it with a wise older woman, determine whether she is dealing with the 90% or the 10%, and then tell the truth about how the 90% made her feel while leaving him free to decide how he wants to respond.
I’m not responsible for how she feels. I care deeply about how she feels.
That freedom makes it effortless and instinctive for me to look for whatever adjustment I can make while remaining my authentic self.
Men own their shit when they can see which shit is actually theirs
I’ve always owned my 10%. That is more true of most men than women give them credit for.
Men become hyper-defensive when the 90%—the part that has nothing to do with being a selfish jerk—gets lumped together with the 10% they genuinely need to understand and change.
Begin with the assumption that he probably has a reasonable explanation for why he did what he did, or that he made an honest mistake. That approach creates an environment where he can open up and soften.
That quality is so rare that I had never met a woman who brought it to a relationship before Jenn.
She has said—and I agree—that she could step into nearly any viable relationship using this approach and, within a couple of months, have the man doing almost everything his partner had been asking him to do.
Show your man this article and ask him whether it feels true.
If your relationship still has enough goodwill to work with, How To Talk To Men and The Couples Course can teach you how to change this dynamic over the next 90 days.
Change the way he experiences you
Learn how to bring him the truth in a form his nervous system can receive—so he has room to become the man you have been asking for.
