Dr. Barta: Welcome back to Reconnection Moments, a space where we get real about intimacy disorders and healing from sexual compulsivity. Not through willpower or shame, but by gently rewiring the brain and body back into connection. I'm Dr. Michael Barta, creator of the Reconnection Model. In each episode, I'll be answering questions I hear most from clients and therapists, and I will also be sharing fresh insights from my ongoing work.

Host: Welcome back to the Reconnection Podcast with Dr. Michael Barta. Today's title is called stop defending yourself and start healing her. So we talked about not making her pain about you and not making your partner responsible for regulating you. But, Dr. Barta, what does a man actually do when his partner is angry, hurt, or asking difficult questions?

Dr. Barta: Well, we learn to listen differently. And, Cory, the reason I'm digging in on these so much is because I'm developing, and hopefully, it's gonna be available soon, where I'm doing a one-day that's more based on my Reconnection Model of what we need to do to become the man that can be there for our partner, right, to help her through this, right? After she's discovered, what do I need to know now? What do I need to integrate with inside of me to be able to be the person who's capable of helping her through this time? Because it's huge. So, again, you know, part of this is learning to listen differently because most of us guys listen to words.

Right? We follow words like we're tracking, you know, a bird in the sky. Right? We never learned, but we're gonna learn if we wanna get better and we wanna help our partner. We have to learn to listen for what is underneath the words.

It's never about the words. What is under the words? Your partner may not be delivering her pain in perfect therapeutic language, but everything she's doing is expressing her pain. She's dealing with betrayal. She's angry.

She's frightened. She's grieving. She's questioning what was real. She can say to us, you never loved me. This whole marriage was a lie.

I don't know who you are. How could you do this to me and our kids? I'm never gonna trust you again. You ruined my life. I hate you.

And what we do and it is you know, our nervous system's gonna respond as I am being attacked. Right? But we gotta stop right there. Right? Because we can only be attacked when we're taking it personally.

She's expressing her pain. This is how she's delivering it. But oftentimes, our instinct is to defend ourselves against every one of their comments. We have to stop. Just stop.

And before we answer anything, we can start asking, what's she trying to get me to hear? Every one of those things I just said that she said is saying, I'm hurt. I'm afraid. I don't feel worthy. I'm broken.

I'm at fault. I'm unattractive. That's what she's really saying. And if you don't know, ask her. Don't ever tell her what she feels.

Let her tell you.

Host: Let's take our whole marriage was a lie. What should he do?

Dr. Barta: Well, a lot of times when we hear that, you know, the first response is, that's not fair. You know, we had good times. I really did love you. Our children are real. Our life wasn't fake.

But to her, it was. Now, not entirely, but she's trying to make sense of everything that just happened. So how much did she not know? These are where these questions are coming from. They're coming from fear.

They're coming from terror. Right? They're scared beyond beyond anything. And maybe what we say is true. But before we start defending ourselves, if that's where you go, you're having the wrong conversation.

Instead of correcting her, we can again say, and I told you this in a previous podcast. Right? Well, I kept significant parts of my life from you. You're right. I lied to you.

Now you have to look back to see what was real. You have to look back with a fine-tooth comb to see if what was happening really was happening. So we can ask her, tell me what feels most uncertain and unreal to you now. And notice what happened. I didn't say, I know how you feel.

I didn't say to her what she's experiencing. I acknowledged what I did and invited her to tell me what it did to her. That is attunement. We are looking inside another person and reading the emotions. Words don't count.

Host: What about you never loved me?

Dr. Barta: Well, I mean, I mean, again, don't immediately litigate the sentence. Don't say, of course, I love you. Right? Or go into shame. You can say something like, my behavior has given you every reason to question what my love meant.

I wanna hear what you're questioning rather than defending against it. Then listen. Maybe she tells you, if you loved me, how could you expose me to this? Now you have something to respond to because she told you what it is underneath the statement. You didn't decide for her, and that's important.

Host: So is that what you mean by validation?

Dr. Barta: In part, yes. Alright? So validation doesn't mean you claim you know what the other person feels. In fact, I don't want you saying I know exactly how you feel because you don't. Validation really means that we're recognizing her response has a reason.

It's coming from deep pain. It's coming from emotion. Right? And we need to validate those emotions, our wounds to her, how we inflicted the pain on her, you know, what we might have made her believe about herself from our actions. It can sound anything like, given what I kept from you, makes perfect sense that you're questioning me.

You have every right to be angry. I gave you the reason to question, am I trustworthy? You shouldn't have to discover this. You deserve information about your own life that I kept from you. Those statements acknowledge what really is happening without pretending that you have the access to her emotional experience.

Host: What if she doesn't calm down after he validates her?

Dr. Barta: Well, then stop treating validation like it's a medication. You don't say one empathetic sentence and expect her nervous system to reset. Sometimes tell me, I validate her, and she just keeps going. Okay? Maybe she's not finished.

Maybe there's more pain. Maybe you're gonna be validating her emotions for a really long time. How long did you betray her? That's how long you have. That's how long you owe her to validate her.

If you're thinking my therapist told me to validate her, so she'll calm down. That's not true because you're not validating her to make you feel better. You're still making this about yourself. The purpose is not to get her to stop. The purpose is, I want to hear you.

Host: So why is defensiveness so destructive?

Dr. Barta: Because our defensiveness tells her that I'm protecting myself, that me protecting me is still more important than hearing how I hurt you. So think about the history. Sexual behavior may have helped you escape what you felt. Our secrecy protected us from consequences. Lying protected us from being exposed.

Compartmentalization allowed us to keep our parts of our lives separate. Now the truth is out. If you immediately defend, minimize, or explain, or shut down every time she expresses pain, you're still operating out of that old system. You're still operating from the same basic principle. I have to protect me first, and that absolutely has to change.

Host: What about explaining why he did what he did?

Dr. Barta: There's absolutely a place for explanation. Like, we can look at attachment. We can look at early experiences. We can look at emotional regulation. We can look at your nervous system, the addiction, your shame.

We can look at how your sexual behavior became a way of changing how you feel. And understanding this matters, but also what's more important is the timing. If your partner says, you destroyed my trust, and you immediately launch into your childhood. Well, Dr. Barta told me it's about my pain. You know?

If we're using explanations, then we're avoiding accountability. There is a place to understand your history. But when she's talking about how she was hurt, that's not the time. That's defending yourself. That's trying to get out of jail free card.

Right? And that's the way they see that. It's not that it's not incredibly important, but it's not important at this time. What's important at this time is listening to what happened to her.

Host: So explanation can become an excuse even when he doesn't intend it that way.

Dr. Barta: Exactly. The explanation itself isn't the excuse. It's how we use it. My nervous system learned this. Okay.

My childhood taught me to avoid vulnerability. Good to know. Sexual behavior became a way for me to regulate my mood. Okay. That's great to know too.

Right? Those things help us learn how we became addicted and capable of betrayal. But none of them ends with, therefore, you shouldn't be hurt by this. No. Your history may explain your behavior.

It doesn't erase the impact of your behavior. And you know what? A lot of partners are gonna need a lot of recovery time before they can even hear what happened to you early on. Both realities can exist at the same time. We can examine how you got here and still hold ourselves responsible for what we do now.

Host: Let's talk again about the man who says, I didn't tell her because I didn't wanna hurt her.

Dr. Barta: Yeah. That's you know, I spoke about that earlier, and that's one of my favorite things. And and, you know, again, this is something I really, really challenge because we already hurt them. The behavior already happened. The injury already exists.

She didn't know about it. So instead of saying that, you know, now I have guys asking. I want them to ask themselves. I want them to look deeper. If we say, I don't wanna tell her because I don't wanna hurt her, we have to ask ourselves, well, what would happen if I told her?

What's the response I'm gonna get? If I tell her, I'm gonna experience pain. Do you see how we're lying to ourselves? I don't want to tell her to hurt her. No. We don't wanna tell her because when we do, it's gonna cause our pain.

Right? She may look at us differently. She may leave. But in our own shame, fear, guilt, grief, and uncertainty, we can ask ourselves, was I protecting her from the pain, or was I protecting myself from how her pain would make me feel?

Host: If he realizes that that's what he was doing

Dr. Barta: Yeah. Then everything changes. Whatever pain when her pain makes you feel uncomfortable, don't try to escape. When she's angry, don't try to defend. When she doesn't trust you, don't try to prove to her that you're trustworthy or demand her reassurance.

When her questions exhaust you, please don't make her feel guilty for having them. When she doesn't recognize your progress, don't don't demand that she's responsible for recognizing your progress. Regulate yourself and turn towards her.

Host: So what does turning toward her look like?

Dr. Barta: Well, it's like when she says, I don't trust you. My old response may have been, what else am I supposed to do? I've been completely honest for six months. Jeez. Get over this.

But we can be accountable instead and say, you know what? I've given you a ton of reasons not to trust me or what I told you. What's making this trust particularly difficult for you today? And she can say, you are. And we'll go, you know, you exactly know that I'm the same person.

But instead of defending ourselves again, we can become accountable and admit that we have kept a huge part of our life hidden from her for the entire relationship, what are you we can ask, what are you questioning about me right now? And if she says, I'm still so angry at you, we can get flippant and go, I know. You tell me that every day. We validate it instead. You have every right and every reason to be angry with me.

We can ask, what do you need from me the most right now? Whether she responds, you know, like we want them to respond, doesn't matter, because if we're looking for a response, we're manipulating. She can respond whatever we're, to whatever she wants, in whatever way she wants. But what I want you to hear is that we're turning towards her.

We're being there. We're communicating. We're validating. Right? That's turning towards her.

It doesn't say I know how you feel because that will get you punched. Right? I mean, no one likes to be told how they feel. So don't assume that we know. But we can validate the emotion she's expressing to us.

You're not telling her what her experience is. You're just creating room for her to tell you.

Host: And what if what she says hurts them?

Dr. Barta: Well, it's going to hurt, and it's maybe gonna hurt for quite a while. Right? I'm not asking you to become emotionless. You can feel devastated. You can feel misunderstood, ashamed.

We can feel definitely hurt by something she says. But it's our responsibility to work through that with our therapist, with our support system, with the recovery community, and our own internal work. What you cannot continue doing is handing those feelings back to her saying, in effect, now take care of what your pain is doing to me. That's the pattern we're trying to end here.

Host: You said her distrust isn't something she's doing to him. Could you explain that?

Dr. Barta: Yeah. Men sometimes experience their partner's distrust as punishment. Right? Why is she checking on me again? Why does she need to know where I am every second of the day?

Why doesn't she believe me? How long am I gonna have to prove myself? Her distrust didn't appear in a vacuum, Einstein. Your behavior gave her the evidence that what she believed was true could later turn out to be incomplete or not true at all. Information affecting her life existed outside of her awareness.

So don't become resentful towards her for questioning the person you who gave her the reason to ask these questions. Trust isn't something you demand back. You become trustworthy and allow her to determine what she experiences over a period of time.

Host: Is there a simple process men can remember during those conversations?

Dr. Barta: Well, I don't know how simple it is. You know, a lot of times we're looking for silver bullets. And I and I and I gotta tell you, there's no silver bullet, guys. There's no silver bullet. Right?

No matter what. You know, I have guys in the Intensive all the time coming up three or four times during the week. What should I say about this? What should I say about that? Dude, I just say, there's no silver bullet, man.

I can't tell you what you need to say. I don't know her. Be with her emotionally. But there is a process you can do, and we've always spoken about it in several other places. But we have to notice our reaction.

We have to be in tune with ourselves, you guys. We're not we're not looking for our worth out there. And that's what these that's what we do in these conversations. These early conversations where, like, well, if I say the right thing, then she'll respond this way. That's that's me being totally selfish.

Right? That's I'm manipulating. I regulate myself. You know, how do I regulate myself? Well, there's a very simple technique that was created in DBT called the 5-4-3-2-1.

Right? 5-4-3-2-1 is you name five things you see. Then you name four things you feel that's not inside your body. So I can feel my butt on the chair, my back against the chair. I can feel my feet on the floor. Three things I can hear.

Okay. Well, I hear the chair creaking. I hear my voice. There's cars in the out outside. Two things I can smell.

My smeller is not very good, but my house smells okay. Smell my coffee. And then one thing you can taste, and I always have, you know, something to liquid. What I'm doing is I'm using my five senses to bring me back. Right?

That's a way to regulate myself. The fastest ways to get back regulation is using ice, ice cubes. Right? Make yourself a little ice pack with ice cubes in it. And if you're going into a difficult conversation, hold it in your hands.

I mean, explain what it is. But when the dive reflex is is activated through the cold response, what basically is happening in our bodies is our heart rate slowing down. And the heart is what triggers the whole system. Right? So if we get a high heart rate, then we're gonna be in sympathetic.

We're gonna defend. We're gonna we're gonna, you know, be angry, or we're gonna wanna run away. And then if that continues, then we're gonna go into what I call the blue state, and that's where we just shut down. Right? So we gotta be able to regulate our own nervous system in order to stay present.

We turn towards her. We turn our attention to her. We listen for what's underneath the words, and we validate what she's saying. We own what belongs to us, and we stay present. I want to emphasize that last word. And maybe that's the most simple technique, Cory, you asked me about, is just keep repeating to yourself.

Stay. Stay. Stay. Alright? Because for many men, our escaping was our solution.

Fantasy was an escape. Secrecy was an escape. Lying was an escape. Our compartmentalization was escape. Defensiveness can become an escape.

Shame becomes escape. And recovery means not escaping every time something feels emotionally difficult.

Host: And what does staying communicate?

Dr. Barta: Well, over time, our behavior begins communicating something different. We're actively telling her, your feelings don't make me disappear. Your anger doesn't require me to attack you. Your pain doesn't require you to take care of me. Your questions don't automatically make me defensive.

You don't have to pretend to be okay that I'm okay. And most importantly, you don't have to carry what happened alone while you're standing right next to me. That's relational change. Not memorizing the perfect empathetic sentence. Not learning how to say the right thing so she'll calm down.

That's manipulation. Being capable of remaining emotionally present with another person when what she is telling you is difficult to hear.

Host: Well, if you could leave the man listening with one challenge, what would it be?

Dr. Barta: Well, I guess it's all about you know, the next time you your partner says something that makes you wanna defend yourself or or what makes you wanna escape, just don't. Not yet. And before you answer her, ask yourself, what is she asking me to hear? Almost every time she wants you to hear that she's in pain. And if we don't know, we can gently ask, and we may get pushback on our questions, and that's okay too.

But it shows we're interested. So we can ask something like, what do you most need me to hear right now in what you're saying? Then shut up and listen. Don't tell her how she feels. Don't tell her how she should feel.

Don't correct her experience, and don't explain yourself out of accountability. Listen to her.

Host: Well, thank you, Dr. Barta. And thank you for listening in to this episode today at the Reconnection Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Barta, his 5-Day Reconnection Intensives, visit drmichaelbarta.com today.

Dr. Barta: Thanks for joining me today. If you want to learn more about how this healing happens, visit drmichaelbarta.com. And if this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. Until next time, keep reconnecting.