Oh, I hear you. And I want to sit with that for a second, because “my partner talks over me” sounds like a simple complaint, but what I’m actually hearing underneath it is: I don’t feel like I matter in this conversation. I don’t feel heard.
That’s not a small thing. That’s an attachment wound happening in real time.
Here’s what I want you to understand about what’s probably going on. When your partner talks over you, they’re not sitting there thinking, “I don’t care what this person has to say.” What’s much more likely is that they are in their own pain, their own fear, their own activated state, and their organism is doing what organisms do when they feel threatened: they move, they push, they protect.
Think about what I always say about those two videos playing at the same time. You have your video, which starts the moment you tried to speak and got cut off, the moment you felt invisible and unimportant. And they have their video, which started somewhere else entirely, maybe a place where they feel like they can never get it right, or they’re about to be told again that they’ve failed you somehow. Both of you are in your own private screening room, and nobody is watching the same film.
What I also want you to notice is this: the more you feel talked over, the more urgency you probably bring to trying to be heard. And the more urgency you bring, the more activated your partner gets. And the more activated they get, the more they talk over you. Around and around you go.
That cycle is the problem. Not your partner. Not you. The cycle.
Now here’s the harder thing I want to say to you directly. When you come to your partner and try to tell them “you talk over me,” even if you say it beautifully, even if you use all the right words, their nervous system is going to hear something like, “you are failing me, you are not enough, you are doing it wrong.” And they are going to protest that, one way or another. They might talk over you some more, actually. I know. I know how maddening that sounds.
What actually creates change here is not the conversation technique. It’s building enough safety between the two of you that your partner no longer needs to protect themselves quite so urgently when you speak. When they genuinely trust that your voice coming toward them is not a threat, something starts to shift.
That’s the work. It’s not about who gets the floor. It’s about why getting the floor feels like a matter of survival for both of you.
What does it feel like inside you in that moment when they cut you off? That’s where I’d want to start.
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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: Communication Exercises for Couples (That Actually Work)
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