At a glance
Living with constant criticism wears down the part of you that used to answer back. You want to take the point seriously and you also want to stop being measured, and holding both leaves you tired and quietly braced. This article looks at what criticism is usually reaching for, and what you can do with it.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- The subject is never the subject. Clients bring me the dishwasher and arrive, 10 minutes later, at whether they are seen as competent.
- Criticism often arrives where asking failed. Clients who criticise most have usually been asking for something for a long time and getting nowhere.
- The quiet one is still in the argument. Clients who stop responding describe a running commentary that never reaches the room.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
Why does it land so hard when it is only about the dishes?
Because a complaint is about a thing you did, and criticism tends to arrive as a statement about the kind of person you are.
Hearing that the recycling was left again is irritating. Hearing that you never think about anyone else is something different, because there is no action you can take to answer it. One is a request with a job attached. The other is a verdict, and verdicts are met with defence rather than with help.
What makes it worse is that the verdict usually lands somewhere you already doubt yourself. If you grew up being measured, the remark does not start a new feeling in you, it rejoins an old one, and that is why a small comment can take an entire evening away. You are not only answering your partner. You are answering everyone who ever said a version of the same thing.
What is my partner actually doing when they criticise?
Often something clumsy and hopeful at once: trying to be felt by someone who has stopped responding to the polite version.
I want to be careful here, because explaining criticism is not the same as excusing it, and a reasonable motive does not make the effect any kinder. But it does change what you are dealing with. When I see a critical partner on their own, the account is almost always the same: they asked once, pleasantly, and nothing happened. They asked again, less pleasantly. Somewhere along that line the request turned into a character description, and by then it is being answered as an insult rather than as a request, which guarantees that the original thing still does not get done.
There are other reasons too, and they matter for what you do next. Some people criticise when they are frightened, because finding the fault feels better than feeling the worry underneath. Some learned it as the household language and do not hear it as harsh. And some are genuinely contemptuous, which is a different situation and needs to be named as one rather than smoothed over.
Why have I stopped saying anything back?
Because withdrawing works, in the short term. It ends the exchange, and it also ends the closeness.
People who live with a steady drip of fault-finding rarely leave in one decision. They leave by degrees, by telling you less, by keeping the good news for a friend, by answering in the shortest sentence that will do. From the inside it does not feel like a strategy. It feels like being tired. Research touches this at one point: in a study of 178 students in Singapore, who read written scenarios rather than lived through real arguments, those who rated the people closest to them as more critical expected to put more distance between themselves and the critic, though they did not report expecting to feel more hurt.1 It is a small, artificial study and I would not build anything on it, but the shape is familiar from the room. The hurt goes quiet long before the distance does.
This is the part that worries me most in long marriages. By the time one person says that nothing they do is ever enough, the other often has no idea how far the retreat has gone, because the peace at home reads to them as the problem having passed.
Is some of it fair?
Sometimes, and the fair part is usually buried inside the unfair delivery, which is what makes it so hard to find.
I would not ask you to accept a verdict about your character. I would ask you to look for the request hiding inside it, because it is often small and quite reasonable, and because answering it is the one move that takes the heat out without requiring your partner to behave perfectly first. That is not the same as agreeing that you are the problem, and it does not mean the responsibility is evenly shared. In some couples it plainly is not.
There is a harder version of this question. Some people were criticised so thoroughly early on that any feedback now registers as an attack, and in that case the work is partly yours, in understanding why the volume arrives turned up. Both can be true at the same time: your partner speaks more harshly than they know, and you hear it louder than it was said.
What can I do with it this week?
Answer the request and decline the verdict. Those are 2 separate moves, and most people are doing neither or both at once.
- Ask what the wish is. What would you like me to do differently is a flat, unglamorous question, and it moves the conversation off your character within a sentence.
- Name the form, not the person. Saying that you stop being able to hear it when it comes as never and always is more usable than saying that your partner is critical.
- Say the effect while it is still mild. Most people wait until the resentment is heavy, and by then whatever they say sounds like an accusation.
- Notice your own exits. Shorter answers, longer hours at work and a quieter weekend are worth catching early, because they do their damage quietly.
These steps suit a relationship where criticism has become the habit the 2 of you fall into under pressure. They are not adequate everywhere. Where the criticism carries open contempt, where it happens in front of your children or your friends, where you are being told what you may wear, see or spend, or where you have started to doubt your own account of what was said, that is a different difficulty and it will not yield to a better question. If you recognise that, I would rather you brought it to a session, on your own or in couples therapy in Copenhagen, than kept adjusting yourself at home to see whether it helps.
What I cannot tell you from here is which of these you are in, and I would be wary of anyone who claimed otherwise. Couples who are tired and clumsy usually sound at first very like couples where something colder is happening. The difference tends to show itself quickly once both people are in the room, which is a large part of what the early sessions are for.
Questions people ask
Can therapy help if my partner does not think anything is wrong?
Yes, and that is a common way for this work to start. How you raise things and what you do with the answer are both yours to change, and they usually change what comes back.
Will you decide which of us is right?
No, and a verdict from me would be no more useful than the ones you give each other. I am more interested in what each of you is trying to get across and why it is not arriving.
What if I am the critical one?
Then you are in a good position, because the person who notices it first is usually the one who can shift it. I would want to look at what you keep asking for, and at what happens to you when it is ignored.
Do you teach communication techniques?
Some, though technique alone tends to fail at exactly the moment it is needed. Most of the work goes into what makes the subject feel dangerous for each of you.
How long does this kind of pattern take to change?
I cannot give you an honest number, because it depends on how long it has been running and what sits under it. Couples do tend to notice the quality of the conversation changing before the subject itself is settled.
If criticism has become the way you speak to each other, I can help you hear the need inside it in EFT couples therapy.
You may also find these helpful
Sources
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
