A defensive person makes honest communication impossible. When one partner cannot receive feedback without escalating, the other partner stops giving feedback. The silence that follows is not resolution. It is the slow withdrawal of honesty from the relationship. Issues that could have been addressed when they were small grow unchecked because raising them is more trouble than tolerating them. By the time the accumulated resentment surfaces, it often surfaces as an ultimatum or an exit, which the defensive person experiences as sudden and unfair because they were never told anything was wrong. They were never told because their defensiveness made telling them too costly.
Dr. David Steinbok works with adults in Boca Raton who are experiencing this erosion pattern in their relationships. A therapist for defensive behavior helps interrupt the cycle by making the defensiveness itself the subject of therapeutic exploration, which is something that outside relationships rarely have the structure or safety to do.
