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Archive for the ‘Defensiveness’ Category

At Affordable Relationship Counseling in San Diego, I specialize in counseling couples for many problems, including infidelity. I had cause to reflect on the growing effects of social media on relationship functioning in today’s technologically-dominated world. In the May, 2012 issue of ATLANTIC, Stephen Marche states that “We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet we have never been more accessible. Over the past three decades, technology has delivered to us a world in which we need not be out of contact for a fraction of a moment…Yet within this world of instant and absolute communication, unbounded by limits of time or space, we suffer from unprecedented alienation. We have never been more detached from one another, or lonelier. ..We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are.

In my practice, I often treat couples who complain of the ruptured bond between them. Some people look to escape their grief and loss instead of facing it head on. In fact, research has found that a couple waits an average of six years before seeking marriage counseling.

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As a marriage and family therapist in San Diego, I practice couples therapy and individual therapy using an intergenerational perspective. I specialize in helping couples and individuals live more meaningfully in their most important relationships. Relationship counseling and individual counseling is better to seek sooner rather than later when one experiences chronic challenges in relational functioning. Research has shown that couples typically wait 6 years before seeking couples counseling. It is wiser to get help earlier and before problems fester, causing resentments to harden and become more resistant to treatment.

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Random House Webster’s Dictionary defines “defensiveness” as “sensitive to the act of criticism.” In his book entitledWhat Predicts Divorce?” John Gottman describes four types of communication that he labels the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse. According to him, these styles of communication are not helpful and can be predictive of divorce. One of the four horsemen is defensiveness. When a partner is defensive, he or she may also saying, “I am more interested in protecting myself than caring about what you are thinking or feeling in the context of this problematic situation.” Things can proceed downhill from there between the sparring partners.

In order to avoid provoking defensiveness in your partner, you may want to try some new self-management strategies:

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