relationship insecurity

Dismantling the Defenses of Female Relationship Insecurity

Part 2 of Are You Being Blamed For Your Wife’s Relationship Insecurity

In Part 1 we explored the process by which a woman transfers the responsibility for her problems with relationship insecurity to her husband. She does this by blaming him for not making her feel more secure. When she begins to use anger and blame, she finds she can cover up the feelings of dependency and helplessness that accompany relationship insecurity. Soon she finds herself caught up in a habit that she is helpless to stop.

In Part 2 you will be introduced to an easy way to take apart the defense mechanism of relationship insecurity and put an end to the anger and blame. First let’s do a quick review of how a woman’s thought process works to shift the focus away from her feelings of low self worth and onto your shortcomings as a husband:

1. She begins to feel creeping doubts that you might not be committed to the relationship.

2. This makes her feel weak and vulnerable compared to you, leaving her very uncomfortable.

3. Instead of admitting she is feeling needy, she decides that it couldn’t be her insecurity causing the problem. Clearly it is you who has been withholding assurance and causing her to feel bad about herself.

4. Righteous anger now replaces her feelings of insecurity fueled by her new belief that you aren’t treating her in the manner to which she is entitled.

5. She begins to form a habitual reliance on this defense mechanism of blaming you to cover up her fears and doubts so she does not have to admit to the weakness of relationship insecurity.

Reversing the Behavior Pattern

Now you are going to learn how to reverse this behavior pattern with the use of one phrase. This sentence will actually be doing the work for you behind the scenes so you don’t have to do anything but say it whenever you are blamed for something unfairly.

This phrase is the foundation of the Nicola Method for high conflict. It has been designed to cut through the defenses of an insecure woman leaving her unable to blame you for things you didn’t do wrong. Although you won’t need to know how the sentence works, it can be helpful to understand how it does its job to dismantle the defense. Here is the sentence you will use every time you are unfairly blamed:

“When you said that it seemed like you thought I did something wrong.”

The Role of the Subconscious In Relationship Insecurity

Let’s briefly go through how this sentence works to stop misplaced female anger. One of the ways it works is by directing her attention to the flaw that is always present when someone unfairly blames another. The flaw in all false accusations is simply the fact that you didn’t do anything you should feel ashamed of. In other words, you have done nothing wrong.

But you are not just talking to your wife. You are in a sense dealing with a third party. The subconscious plays a very real role in all defense mechanisms. It is the subconscious that is creating the defense mechanism in order to protect your wife from being hurt. In order to accomplish this, it will try to run a smear campaign against your character in an attempt to get your wife to withdraw her support and her trust.

Like a crafty politician, the subconscious uses her fears about what you think of her to turn her against you, hoping she doesn’t look too closely at the facts. The phrase you are about to learn uses psychology and neurology to redirect her attention away from her emotions and to the facts that her subconscious would prefer you don’t see.

There are several challenges involved in accomplishing this task. You can’t simply point out the flaw. She will interpret this as defensive behavior on your part, and it will make her even more convinced you are guilty. The second challenge to getting her to accept the flaw is the fact that when people are in a high emotion state, particularly anger, they tend to be drawn to what justifies their anger. You will be trying to direct her to focus on something that would take away her anger.

Deconstructing the Entitlement Defense

The sentence you will be using lets you overcome both of these challenges at once. Let’s take a look at how it works to overcome the psychological aspects of the challenge. You can’t tell her what to do when she is angry at you. However you can casually suggest she think about something that might strengthen her belief that her feelings are valid. Focusing on what you did wrong seems like it will help prove her right. Instead it will focus her directly on the flaw in her argument that will prove her wrong.

Now let’s look at the neurological aspect. If you can get her to re-focus her thoughts so she moves into a cognitive or thinking mode her anger will naturally lower. This is the way people commonly get relief from emotional upset. When we take a step back and look at our situation with a clear perspective, we can easily see both why we are upset and what we might be able to do about it. This gives us the feeling of control that takes us off the emotional roller coaster.

Focusing on what you did wrong seems like it would feed her emotions. The opposite is actually true. Thinking about right and wrong makes us look at philosophical issues of ethics and values that takes us to a more intellectual plane. When she puts her focus on why what you did was wrong, she will be taken out of her high emotion state. When her anger lowers she will realize that you didn’t do anything wrong after all.

Although this sentence will work to stop the blame and anger each time you use it, it may have to be used many times before a woman’s subconscious finally gets the message that it no longer works and gives up trying. However, every time you take away her defense mechanism, you help her gain the self esteem she needs in order to resist blaming you in the future. Let’s take one more look at the sentence you will be using whenever you sense you are being blamed due to her relationship insecurity:

“When you said that it seemed like you thought I did something wrong.”

In order for it to work, you will need to stick very closely to the sentence construction as it is written here. However, there are times when she may deflect the sentence or else ignore it. If she does that, you can repeat it with a few minor changes. Here are some alternate ways to say it that will work in case she doesn’t respond to it the first time:

“It just seemed like you were thinking I did something wrong.”

“ I really felt like you were thinking I did something wrong.”

“When you said that it really seemed like you thought I did something wrong.”

You will find when you learn this sentence and start to use it that it has much more power than it seems to looking at it on the page. Using it whenever you feel blamed is a very easy way to begin to make changes in any relationship where there is more conflict than you may be comfortable with.

Related Posts:

Marriage Entitlement: When Your Love Is Not Enough

Traits of Borderline Personality Disorder In High Conflict Women

Defense Mechanisms of the High Conflict Woman In Relationship

Reversing Emotional Dysregulation In Individuals With Traits of BPD

If you would like to learn the Nicola Method so you can put an end to the high conflict situations you may be experiencing, click on this link to the welcome page of this website where you will find the resources you need.

If you want to try out some of the basic techniques of this method for free to see if this method is right for your situation, you can learn them from an intro guide flip-book here or a PDF version of the intro guide here.

Visit Joanna on Google+