Oh, this is such an important question. And I want to start by saying something that might surprise you: the way most people try to talk to their partner about shame actually makes things worse. Not because they’re bad at it. Because nobody teaches us this stuff.
So let me back up and tell you what shame actually is in a relationship context, and then we’ll talk about how to approach it.
Here’s what I know about shame, from sitting with hundreds of couples over twenty years. Shame is not just feeling bad about something you did. Shame is the experience of “I am fundamentally not enough. I am unacceptable. If you really see me, you will leave.” It is one of the most painful human experiences there is. And your partner’s organism, their nervous system, is millions of years old. It knows when it’s being seen in that tender place. And it will do almost anything to not let that happen.
So when you go to your partner and say, “I want to talk about your shame issues,” what their system hears, even if you say it with the softest voice in the world, is: “I see the part of you that you hate most, and I have thoughts about it.” And the drawbridge goes up. Every time.
Here’s what I’d say instead.
First, you need to get curious about what the shame is actually protecting. Because shame doesn’t walk around naked. It wears a costume. It might look like your partner getting defensive when you give them feedback. It might look like them shutting down in an argument, going completely quiet, disappearing. It might look like them suddenly getting furious when you didn’t expect it. What you see on the outside, the anger, the withdrawal, the dismissiveness, that’s not the shame. That’s the armor. The shame is inside.
Second, and this is the part that requires real courage from you, you have to create the conditions where it’s safe for the armor to come off. You cannot demand that your partner be vulnerable. You cannot schedule shame processing on a Tuesday evening and expect it to go well. What you can do is make yourself available in a way that says, without words mostly, “I am not going to hurt what’s underneath there.”
And here’s the thing I really want you to hear. The most lovable part of your partner is exactly the place where they feel most unacceptable. I say this all the time to couples. The place where your partner can feel like they’re not enough, like they’re a disappointment, like they’re too much or not enough, that is not their worst part. That is actually the most human, the most beautiful, the most reachable part of them. And if you can communicate, genuinely, not as a strategy but in your bones, “I want to meet that part of you, I am not afraid of it, I will not use it against you,” that is when something opens.
Now, the practical piece. When a shame moment is happening in real time, which it usually is during a conflict, go slow. Don’t try to fix it. Don’t try to solve it. Don’t say “you shouldn’t feel that way.” That violates something really important, the right of that hurt part of them to simply exist and be witnessed. What they need is not to be rescued from the feeling. They need to be seen inside it.
You can say something like, “It looks like something just landed hard for you. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” Simple. Low pressure. No agenda.
And finally, the last thing I’ll say. If shame is a big presence in your relationship, the two of you probably have a dance around it. One of you likely pursues, pushes, tries to get in. The other likely withdraws, protects, shuts down. And you both end up more alone than when you started. That is the cycle, and it is keeping both of you from actually getting what you need from each other. Working with someone who can help you step out of that dance together is worth considering, because it is genuinely hard to do alone.
But you asking this question? That already matters. You’re trying to reach toward something real. That counts.
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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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