How Evangelicalism Fuels Defensiveness
This week, we’re starting our summer podcast series called Partnership Building.
We’re riffing off the fantastic research of Dr. John Gottman, author of The Marriage Clinic and The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, to talk about how sexual health is relational health.
Check out our introduction to Partnership Building on Spotify:
Every therapist who studies couples therapy starts with John Gottman’s research. His most notable claim to fame is understanding the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. These four relationship patterns consistently lead to negative outcomes:
Criticism: Negative comments about the person’s character. (These are different from complaints, which are typically comments about the relational process.)
Defensiveness: Most often a response to criticism or perceived criticism, is a response in which a person deflects the feedback.
Contempt: Comments that treat a person with disrespect and mocking, using ridicule and name calling to convey a sense of being better than the other person.
Stonewalling: The process of withdrawing, shutting down, not responding to the partner, and continuing to do so over a long period of time.
In future episodes in this series, we’ll talk more exclusively about the seven principles that make relationships work. But Julia and I wanted to start with the Four Horsemen because it’s important to note our areas for growth. We share a common horseman that we turn to in moments of conflict. Julia shares:
“Defensiveness is the most challenging of the Four Horsemen for me. Our intimate partnerships are often the most vulnerable ones. In my relationship with you [Jeremiah], or previous partners, I am more likely to feel misunderstood, or missed in some way.
And even if you are not actually criticizing me, because that would be rare in our relationship, if I am feeling sensitive towards an attack that you're not actually giving, then I might move into a very defensive space.”
And from me:
“I noticed that I also get really defensive, because more than anything in this world, I want you to be happy, and I fall into the trap a lot of thinking that my decisions interfere with or affect your happiness, that you'll be mad at me.
And then most importantly, as a preemptive way of stopping you from being mad at me, even if you aren’t mad at me, I will get really animated. I'll overexplain myself, I'll start talking louder. My diction becomes more enunciated and that's really how defensiveness commonly starts to play out for me.”
In good news, as I mention in the episode, neither of us criticize each other, which often leads into the other two Horsemen.
We’re willing to bet that for many folks who grew up in EMPish communities (and actively choose not to be assholes, like most of us), defensiveness is the most common of the horsemen to use in communication and conflict.
After all, as friend and religion/psychology Richard Beck explains, EMPish religions are established around defending the religious tradition and ensuing cultural norms. There are obvious examples of this. Apologetics, for instance, is a strategy for arguing about the existence of the Bible and conservative social values using a literalist debate style. I’m also having some mild flashbacks to door knocking campaigns that involved telling random people about Jesus.
Beck explores defensiveness from the theological concepts of the religion. He developed the Defensive Theology Scale, which assesses for beliefs that a religion provides:
Special protection: God protects me and my family from misfortune.
Special insight: God gives me clear insight to help me solve my problems.
Divine solicitousness: God cares about the small details of my life -to use Richard’s example- where I put my keys.
Special destiny: God has a plan for my life, and I need to discern (a good religious word) what that plan is.
Denial of randomness: God placed this thing in my life. It’s a God thing.
When something goes wrong, it’s not God’s fault, because God can do no wrong. It must be my fault. I must have sinned too much. I must have not tried hard enough.
And so I ask for forgiveness, even in situations where I actually haven’t done anything wrong. I try harder. I give more money to the church. I push boundaries that aren’t in my best interest to be pushed.
Beck writes:
“All this is motivated to repress existential moments when we feel that we are, at times, small, frail creatures who find the universe, even with God in it, confusing and perplexing.”
He suggests that these types of traditions create a "worldview defense,” meaning that defensiveness translates into multiple areas of life. We see this most commonly in EMPish-endorsed media, such as Fox News, but the defensiveness also settles into our communication with partners.
And that’s before we get to the sexism baked into EMPish culture, where women young girls get criticism from others in the community regarding decisions that they make about clothing, physical presentation, volume and tone of their voice, and conflict resolution strategies.
After all, in EMPish communities, women are responsible for the sexualities of women AND men.
Julia describes how this misrepresentation of a myriad of choices from her religious community of origin creates a more intense kind of defensiveness:
“If I perceive that you are going to misunderstand me, I can pretty quickly jump into defensiveness. I overexplain myself and giving reasons for why I do things, even though I don't really need to do that. But, my 7-year old self had a lot of unmet needs that my 30-something self is still trying to meet.”
We talk more about ways of reducing defensiveness in relationships at the end of the episode, especially by “taking the time to understand how something impacted you before or if I move into sharing my intention.”
But for today, what are ways that you notice defensiveness showing up in your relationship? What role do you think Evangelical Christianity played in creating defensiveness?