Taking Accountability in Relationships

Accountability in relationships can help you build deeper connections

Do the relationships in your life – with your partner, family, friends and coworkers – currently center around conflict and misunderstanding? While you cannot control the other people in your life, you can control how you respond during interactions. Taking accountability in relationships, and seeking to understand the other person better, can lead to deeper connections with the people around you.

Letting Go of Defensiveness

Defensive responses to questions or conflict can undermine any relationship in your life.

Rather than seeking to understand the other person’s viewpoint and trying to reach a win-win solution, defensiveness can put up a wall between you. That wall can prevent you from experiencing real intimacy or warmth with a partner or friend, and it can cause colleagues to avoid you or pass you over for projects.

Here’s a quick gut check to determine if you rely on defensiveness in arguments or conversations with others. Do you often:

• Stop listening to the other person and begin formulating your own reply?
• Speak quickly and rush through a series of counterarguments without pausing for a response?
• Begin most replies with the word “but…”?
• Deflect criticism by criticizing the other person?
• Blame others rather than owning up to your role in the conflict?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you owe it to yourself to examine the reasons behind your defensive stance.

While you might believe you’re just trying to state your case and present your own side of the story, going on the defense often means that you’re trying to avoid uncomfortable emotions.

As Ellen Hendriksen, Ph.D., observed in a Psychology Today article:

“What do a medieval fortress, a balled-up porcupine, and a linebacker have in common? They’re all pros at getting defensive. And when we humans are faced with criticism, we also ready the drawbridge, project a ball of spines, or prepare for the tackle. Getting defensive helps us protect our character and our sense of competence.

The only problem? Getting defensive with friends, your boss, your partner and yourself often backfires. It pushes people away, makes us look immature and sends a message that we’re unable to regulate our emotions.”

While you might be preserving your ego in the short-term, your defensiveness could cause long-term harm to your most important relationships. So, what’s the solution? How do you break the defensiveness cycle?

Tapping into Empathy

To break a defensiveness habit, and to achieve better communication with others, begin by letting go of your own worries and fears for a moment.

Remember that the other person is a flawed human as well: She has her own worries, wants, fears and needs. She also might not have the perfect words to express those needs, and communication breakdowns can spiral out of control when two flawed individuals try their best to express emotions, wants and needs.

When you feel tempted to give a counterargument, pause first. Breathe. Look at the other person and tell yourself “hey, this person cares enough about me to want to solve this problem.” Taking that moment to pause and recognize the other person as human helps you tap into a communication superpower: Empathy.

According to renowned sociologist Brene Brown, “empathy fuels connection; sympathy drives disconnection.” She goes on to describe the four elements of empathy:

1. Taking the other person’s perspective
2. Refraining from judging the other person
3. Recognizing an emotion in other people
4. Communicating acknowledgement of that emotion

She beautifully sums up that idea in this short, animated video that’s worth a watch. She closes that video with the idea that, “Rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.”

In that video, Brown highlights how to show empathy for someone experiencing a difficult time in life, but that skill can also help you move past and resolve conflicts in your relationships. When you communicate with a partner, friend or coworker and seek connection rather than victory, the conversation changes. The mood shifts.

With a partner or friend, connection is an obvious – if unstated – goal. With a coworker or other relationship, you might not feel an emotional drive toward connecting with that person. However, if you can connect with someone on even a basic level, communication improves and projects move more effortlessly. Empathy and connection can serve you in all aspects of your life.

Understanding How Your Actions Affect Others

Next, to move past defensiveness and into connection, you must get comfortable with taking accountability for your own role in others’ lives.

If you miss a deadline at work, it can cause a domino effect that can impact the entire project or client relationship. If you respond to your partner with a sarcastic tone, you could ruin your date night and chip away at your loving connection.

Now, let me pause here for a moment, because I know some of you will think:

“But I didn’t mean to speak sarcastically and hurt his feelings”

Or

“Missing that deadline was out of my control. I was waiting on Bob…”

For sure, you might have had positive or neutral intent toward your partner. Extenuating circumstances might have impacted your work.

However, here in this moment, an important relationship in your life needs your attention and care. When you stop to acknowledge how your actions negatively impacted that relationship, it helps the other person feel heard and respected. They feel more connected to you in a way that can lead to real problem-solving together.

As you acknowledge your role in the conflict, take care to not blow it out of proportion in your own mind. You’re not saying “Yep, I am a terrible partner” or “My work stinks.” You are owning up to one moment in time that impacted another person. That’s it.

As you practice this skill, you will begin to feel its positive effects in your own body and life. You will begin to understand that you are not admitting defeat or failure; you are simply admitting to a fumble or a less-than-stellar moment, which is truly inevitable for us all in pretty much everything we do at some point.

News flash: You are as human as the rest of us. It’s ok to not be perfect. The trick is to not hide behind a wall of defensiveness that prevents relationships from moving forward in a healthy way for you both.

If you need help moving past defensiveness in order to deepen your relationships with others, contact me. My therapy practice serves individuals, couples and families in the greater Denver area.

Sincerely,