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This post is Part 3 of a series.

In Part 2 of this series, I explored the ways women tend to respond to their partner’s defensiveness and anger. Specifically, I addressed the self-protective but also self-abandoning mechanisms we revert to when we get blindsided by our partner’s reaction to hearing that we were hurt by them. I described the situation where a woman tells her partner that he’s upset her, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and instead of the empathy and understanding she needs, what comes at her is rage and an emotional attack. Women are then quick to assume that they just didn’t phrase their hurt correctly, and not clearly enough for him to understand or empathize with, so it must be her fault that he couldn’t hear her and was so angry. I explained that women tend to jump straight into their assigned role as the perpetrator; when he can’t empathize with her hurt, she becomes the one who hurt him. And from there, she sets out on a mission to “win him back,” jumping through hoops to convince him that he should still love her (despite having wounded him with her experience........

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