In the last article, we talked about personalization — that automatic pattern of making our spouse’s emotions, behaviors, and moods about us. We explored why it happens (vulnerability, anxiety, past hurts) and what it costs us (reactivity, defensiveness, disconnection, loss of teamwork).
But awareness alone isn’t enough. You need a different path.
So here’s the question: When you notice your spouse is upset, frustrated, withdrawn, or tense, what do you do instead of personalizing?
You’re at a fork in the road. You can take the familiar path, the one that leads to “What did I do wrong?” and defensive reactions. Or you can take a different path, one that leads to connection instead of conflict.
Let me show you what that different path looks like.
The Critical Distinction: Observation vs. Interpretation
Before we get to the three steps, you need to understand the single most important distinction in all of this work:
Observation is what you can see and verify. Interpretation is the story you tell yourself about what you see.
When your spouse walks in the door after work and goes straight to the bedroom without greeting you, here’s the observation: My spouse came home and went to the bedroom.
Here’s the interpretation: My spouse doesn’t want to be around me. They’re avoiding me. I must have done something wrong.
See the difference?
The observation is neutral, factual, verifiable. Anyone watching could confirm it.
The interpretation adds meaning, motive, and story. It’s your brain trying to make sense of the observation by filling in the gaps.
And here’s the problem: Your brain fills in those gaps based on your fears, your past experiences, your anxiety about the relationship. Not based on what’s actually true.
Most of us don’t even realize we’re interpreting. The interpretation happens so fast, so automatically, that it feels like fact. Of course they’re avoiding me. It’s obvious.
But it’s not obvious. It’s a guess. And it might be completely wrong.
Your spouse might be:
Overwhelmed from a terrible meeting and needs a moment to decompress,
Fighting back tears from something that happened at work,
Dealing with a splitting headache,
Anxious about a phone call they need to make,
So preoccupied with a problem they didn’t even register your presence.
The observation is the same in all of these scenarios. But the interpretation… and therefore your emotional response and behavior, could be wildly different depending on which story you tell yourself.
So the first skill you need to develop is the ability to catch yourself interpreting and consciously separate it from observation.
Practice this: When you notice yourself starting to react to your spouse, pause and ask: What am I actually observing here? What are the bare facts, before I add any interpretation?
This pause, this moment of separating observation from interpretation, is where everything changes.
Step 1: Start with Observation, Not Interpretation
Let’s practice with some common scenarios:
Scenario: Your spouse is short with you when you ask a question.
Observation: My spouse answered my question with a brief, clipped response.
Interpretation: My spouse is irritated with me. They don’t want to talk to me. I’m annoying them.
Scenario: Your spouse scrolls their phone during dinner and barely engages in conversation.
Observation: My spouse is looking at their phone and responding minimally to my comments.
Interpretation: My spouse finds their phone more interesting than me. They’d rather be anywhere else. Our connection is dying.
Scenario: Your spouse sighs heavily while doing dishes.
Observation: My spouse made an audible sigh while washing dishes.
Interpretation: My spouse is frustrated that they have to do the dishes. They’re annoyed with me for not helping. They’re keeping score and resenting me.
See how the interpretation adds layers of meaning that might not be there at all?
Starting with observation is an act of humility. It’s admitting: I don’t actually know what’s going on inside my spouse right now. I can see their behavior, but I can’t read their mind or know their motives.
And that humility creates space. Space for curiosity instead of certainty, space for inquiry instead of accusation, space for connection instead of conflict.
Step 2: Hold Multiple Possible Interpretations
Once you’ve identified the observation, resist the urge to settle on one interpretation. Instead, intentionally hold multiple possibilities at the same time.
This is harder than it sounds, especially when you’re anxious. Anxiety wants certainty. It wants to know now whether you’re safe or threatened, accepted or rejected, loved or abandoned. Sitting with “I don’t know yet” feels intolerable.
But that tolerance for uncertainty is exactly what you’re building.
Let’s return to our first example: Your spouse comes home and goes straight to the bedroom without greeting you.
Here are multiple possible interpretations:
It could be about me. Maybe I did something earlier that bothered them and they need space before they can talk about it.
It could be about their day. Maybe they had a devastating meeting, a conflict with a colleague, or got bad news about something at work.
It could be about their internal state. Maybe they’re overwhelmed, exhausted, dealing with a headache, feeling anxious about something completely unrelated to me or the relationship.
It could be about something else entirely. Maybe they’re worried about a family member, stressed about finances, processing something they read, or dealing with a health concern.
It could be a combination. Maybe it’s 80% their rough day and 20% something I did that they’re not ready to address yet.
Notice what happens when you hold all of these as possibilities rather than collapsing immediately into one interpretation: You create breathing room. The urgency dissipates. You’re no longer in a state of emergency, scrambling to defend yourself or fix something.
Instead, you’re genuinely uncertain. And uncertainty, while uncomfortable, is honest. I don’t know what’s happening for my spouse right now. Let me find out.
This is the humility I mentioned earlier. You’re admitting that you don’t have access to your spouse’s inner world unless they share it with you. You can’t read their mind. You can’t know their motives. You can observe their behavior, but the meaning of that behavior is not obvious.
And here’s the beautiful thing: This humility is attractive. It’s connective. It says to your spouse, I see you as separate from me, with your own inner world, and I’m curious about it.
Contrast that with personalization, which essentially says: Your behavior is all about me. I know what you’re thinking and feeling, and it’s a judgment of me.
One creates space for your spouse to be human. The other makes everything about you and your anxiety.
Step 3: Respond with Care and Curiosity
Now that you’ve separated observation from interpretation and you’re holding multiple possibilities, how do you actually respond?
This is where empathy comes in. And I think empathy is best understood as two things working together: care and curiosity.
Care is genuine concern for your spouse’s wellbeing. Not fixing them, not taking responsibility for their emotions, not trying to make them feel better so you can feel better. Just: I care about you and I want you to be okay.
Curiosity is genuine interest in their experience. Not interrogating them, not defending yourself, not trying to figure out if it’s about you so you can stop worrying. Just: I want to understand what’s actually happening for you right now.
Together, care and curiosity create something powerful: a non-defensive invitation.
What this sounds like in practice:
“Are you okay?”
“You seem upset — what’s going on?”
“I’m noticing you seem stressed. Want to talk about it?”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Rough day?”
“Want some space, or want company?”
Notice what you’re NOT saying:
“What did I do?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Why are you giving me the silent treatment?”
“If you have something to say, just say it.”
The first set of responses makes room for your spouse’s reality. The second set makes it about you and your anxiety.
The first set says: I’m here, I notice you, I care, and I’m not the enemy.
The second set says: Your mood is threatening to me, and I need to know right now if I’m in trouble.
Here’s what makes this different from personalization: You’re not asking the question to relieve your own anxiety about whether you did something wrong. You’re asking because you genuinely want to know what’s happening in your spouse’s world.
You are making space for their reality without making it about you. You are staying present without making their emotional state a referendum on your relationship.
A Practice Scenario: Putting It All Together
Let’s walk through a complete example so you can see how all three steps work together.
The situation: Your spouse comes home from work. You greet them warmly, but they barely acknowledge you. They set their things down, grab a snack from the kitchen without speaking, and head to the couch where they start scrolling their phone. You feel a pang of hurt and rejection.
Old pattern (personalization):
Your thought: They’re mad at me. What did I do? They’re being cold. This is the silent treatment. They don’t even want to talk to me.
Your feeling: Hurt, anxious, defensive
Your response: You either withdraw to protect yourself (“Fine, I won’t bother them either”), or you confront (“Why are you being like this? If you’re mad at me, just say so”), or you try to fix it desperately (“Are you okay? What’s wrong? Did I do something? I’m sorry if I...”)
Result: You’ve created tension where none might have existed. If they weren’t actually upset with you, they are now — either because you’re withdrawn, confrontational, or anxiously hovering.
New pattern (three-step process):
Step 1: Observation What are the facts? My spouse came home, didn’t engage much with my greeting, got a snack, and is now on the couch on their phone. That’s what I can observe.
Notice the interpretation trying to creep in: They don’t want to be around me. That’s not a fact. Set it aside.
Step 2: Multiple interpretations This could be about me. Maybe I did something earlier that bothered them.
This could be about their day. Maybe it was really hard and they need to decompress before they can engage.
This could be they’re overwhelmed and need space to regulate before connecting.
This could be they’re dealing with something I don’t know about yet.
This could be they didn’t even consciously register my greeting because they’re so preoccupied.
I don’t know which of these is true. And that’s okay. I can find out.
Step 3: Care and curiosity Give them 10-15 minutes of space. Let them decompress.
Then approach (not hovering, not demanding, just present): “Hey, I noticed you seemed pretty stressed when you got home. Rough day? Want to talk about it, or do you just need some quiet time?”
Or even simpler: “Want some space, or want company?”
Possible outcomes:
They might say: “Yeah, today was brutal. Can I just decompress for a bit and then I’ll fill you in?”
They might say: “Actually, I am upset about something. Can we talk?”
They might say: “I didn’t even realize I was being distant. Yeah, let me tell you about what happened at work.”
They might say: “Honestly, I’m not sure what I need right now. I’m just overwhelmed.”
Notice what just happened: You’ve invited them to share their reality. You haven’t made assumptions. You haven’t reacted to a story that might not be true. You’ve created safety for them to tell you what’s actually going on.
And critically: You’ve acted from your values instead of your anxiety.
When You Can’t Control Their Response
Now, I know what some of you are thinking: But what if I do all of this and they still won’t tell me what’s wrong? What if they say ‘nothing’ but clearly something is wrong? What if they use my non-defensive approach as permission to keep me in the dark?
These are valid concerns. And here’s the truth: You can’t control how your spouse responds. You can only control what you offer.
What you’re offering with this approach is:
Safety to have their own feelings without being interrogated,
Space to process before they have to explain,
An assumption of goodwill instead of an assumption of attack,
Curiosity instead of defensiveness.
If your spouse consistently refuses to share what’s going on, or uses your non-defensive approach to punish you with silence, or expects you to read their mind, those are real relationship problems that need to be addressed.
But here’s what I’ve seen over and over again in my work: When one partner consistently offers care and curiosity instead of defensiveness and personalization, the dynamic shifts. Not overnight. Not perfectly. But it shifts.
Because you’re changing the system. You’re no longer participating in the reactive cycle. And when you stop reacting, your spouse has to do something different too.
The Circuit Breaker Questions
Even with all of this understanding, there will be moments when you feel hurt, defensive, or anxious, and you need something to interrupt the automatic reaction before you do or say something you’ll regret.
This is where what I call “circuit breaker questions” come in. These are questions you ask yourself in the moment to create space between your emotional reaction and your behavioral response.
Question 1: “What would love do?”
This isn’t about being a doormat or suppressing your needs. It’s asking: If I were operating from love right now instead of fear or hurt, what would that look like?
Love is patient. Love is curious. Love is generous in its interpretations. Love gives the benefit of the doubt. Love stays present instead of withdrawing to punish.
What would that version of you do right now?
Question 2: “Does this reflect my values?”
Before you respond, check: Is what I’m about to say or do consistent with who I want to be?
You probably have values like:
I want to be loving,
I want to be a team player,
I want to be someone my spouse can count on,
I want to show up with integrity,
I want to be generous instead of defensive.
Is your about-to-happen response consistent with those values? If not, what would be?
Question 3: “What’s the next right thing?”
This shifts your focus from “What do I feel like doing?” to “What’s the right thing to do here?”
Sometimes the next right thing is to pause and breathe. Sometimes it’s to ask a question. Sometimes it’s to give space. Sometimes it’s to take space for yourself. Sometimes it’s to say, “I’m feeling hurt right now, but I don’t want to react. Can we talk about this when I’m calmer?”
The question helps you respond intentionally instead of reactively.
This Works Even When You’re Working Alone
Here’s what’s so powerful about this approach: You don’t need your spouse to agree to anything. You don’t need them to change first. You don’t need perfect trust or a healthy communication pattern already in place.
You can start doing this on your own, right now, in your very next interaction.
And when you do, here’s what you’re demonstrating:
You can handle difficult emotions without making them about you,
You’re safe to be around, even when things are hard,
You see your spouse as a whole person with their own inner world,
You’re on their team, not positioned against them.
Over time… and it does take time, this builds trust. It shows your spouse that you’re not the enemy. That they don’t have to hide their struggles from you or manage your anxiety about their moods.
You’re creating the conditions for real partnership, even if you’re the only one working on it right now.
The Practice, Not Perfection
I want to be clear: This is hard. Especially when you are anxious about your marriage. Especially when you’ve been hurt before. Especially when you’re working on this alone and your spouse isn’t meeting you halfway yet.
You will personalize sometimes. You will react emotionally sometimes. You’ll catch yourself in the middle of a defensive response and think, Dang it, I did it again.
That’s okay. That’s human. That’s part of the process.
The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is building awareness and creating more moments where you catch yourself and choose differently.
Each time you notice “I’m personalizing,” you’ve created a tiny bit of space between the automatic pattern and your response. Each time you ask “What am I observing versus interpreting?” you’ve practiced the skill. Each time you respond with “What’s going on?” instead of “What did I do?” you’ve modeled something different.
Those moments add up. They create new neural pathways. They build new relationship patterns. They demonstrate to your spouse, and to yourself, that you’re capable of something different.
The Skill You’re Really Building
Here’s what this three-step process is really about:
You’re building the capacity to hold both possibilities at the same time:
This might be about me.
This might not be about me.
And to stay present, connected, and curious while you figure out which it is.
You’re learning to be right-sized in your responsibility. Not over-responsible (everything is about me, I caused all of this, I have to fix everything). Not under-responsible (nothing is about me, not my problem, I’m checking out).
Just right-sized: I’m responsible for my behavior, my responses, my impact. I’m not responsible for my spouse’s inner world, their feelings, or their journey.
I can be curious about their world without making it about me. I can care about their wellbeing without taking ownership of it. I can stay connected without merging or losing myself.
This is what healthy, differentiated connection looks like. And it’s the foundation of real partnership — the kind where you’re a team facing life together instead of two anxious people constantly scanning each other for signs of danger.
Even if you’re working on this alone right now, you are changing the system. You are modeling something different. You are creating new possibilities.
And that matters more than you know.
**Start this week**: The next time you notice your spouse’s mood or behavior, pause. Separate observation from interpretation. Hold multiple possibilities. Respond with care and curiosity. Just once. See what happens.
You might be surprised by what you discover. About your spouse, about the situation, and about what becomes possible when you step out of the personalization trap.
Are you working on things alone? Do check out my Lone Ranger Toolkit for help.
👉 CLICK HERE for the Lone Ranger Toolkit.
Dr. Lee H. Baucom is a marriage coach with over 30 years of experience helping couples save and restore their relationships. He is the creator of the Save The Marriage System and author of How To Save Your Marriage In 3 Simple Steps.