That lands heavy, what you just said. And I want to sit with it for a second before we go anywhere with it.
When you say your partner makes you feel ashamed of yourself, I want to gently ask you to look a little closer at what’s actually happening in those moments. Not because your experience isn’t real, it absolutely is. But because shame is such a particular animal, and it matters enormously whether your partner is generating that shame in you, or whether they’re triggering something that was already living inside you long before they showed up.
You hear every criticism as proof that you are not enough.
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Here’s what I know from sixteen years of sitting with couples: shame doesn’t need much of an invitation. It’s the most primal of all the social emotions. And the people we love most, the ones whose opinion of us matters most, they have the most power to light that thing up in us. Not always because they’re doing something cruel. Sometimes just because they matter so much.
What I’ve experienced in my own marriage is exactly this. When my wife is upset with me, when she’s expressing that I haven’t shown up for her, what I hear, regardless of how carefully she phrases it, is: Figs, you are a failure. You are a disappointment. You are unworthy. That shame is mine. It has my name on it. She didn’t put it there. But she can detonate it without even trying.
So the first question is: what does that shame feel like in your body? Does it feel like you’re collapsing inward? Does it feel like you want to disappear? And what do you do with it? Because here’s the thing, when shame hits us, we all move somewhere with it. Some of us attack. Some of us withdraw. Some of us shrink. Some of us go cold and distant. And whatever we do, our partner feels it, and they usually respond in a way that confirms our worst fear. The cycle feeds itself.
Now. There’s a different conversation if your partner is actively criticizing you, belittling you, or shaming you deliberately. That’s a real thing that happens in relationships and it deserves to be named clearly. If someone is using your vulnerabilities as weapons, that’s not you being too sensitive. That’s a real rupture in safety and it needs to be addressed directly.
But in either case, here’s what I want you to hold onto: under that shame, there’s a part of you that’s just longing. Longing to be enough. Longing to be chosen. Longing to be seen without flinching. That part of you deserves to be witnessed, not managed, not fixed, not told to toughen up. That’s the most tender part of you. And the work, whether with your partner or within yourself first, is learning how to protect that part without shutting the whole thing down.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: How Shame Destroys Relationships
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