What Are You Really After?

Early in my marriage, I thought of myself as a trustworthy man. I believed that. It wasn’t a facade — it was a core piece of my identity. So when Hannah expressed anxiety about my flirting with other women, I found myself in an argument I couldn’t understand. I knew I would never act on a flirtation. I knew my intentions were honorable. How could she not see that?

What I didn’t see was this: my primary motive in those arguments wasn’t to understand Hannah. It was to get Hannah to confirm my picture of myself.

I wanted to be seen as a good man. And her anxiety was threatening that.

Most people in close relationships believe their deepest motive is connection — love, closeness, understanding. And at some level, that may be true. But watch what happens in a difficult moment, when something the other person says lands as a challenge to who you believe yourself to be. Watch how quickly “I want to connect with you” becomes “I need you to see me correctly.”

That shift — from connection as a motive to identity confirmation as a motive — appears to be one of the most common and least examined features of intimate relationships. It happens fast, it feels righteous, and it crowds out the very thing we say we most want.

The tell is the urgency of your defense. A genuinely secure identity doesn’t require defending. The louder your argument for your own goodness, the more it suggests your picture needs propping up — that somewhere underneath, you’re not entirely sure the picture is accurate.

A masterful therapist helped me see that two entirely separate things were happening simultaneously, and I had been collapsing them into one.

I may well have been honorable — I’ll grant myself that. I would not have taken my flirtations further. That was true about me. And Hannah was making herself very uncomfortable with my behavior. That was true about her. Her anxiety wasn’t a verdict on my character. My integrity wasn’t an argument against her experience. They were two separate realities, running in parallel, neither one canceling the other out.

But I couldn’t see that as long as my motive was to establish which one of us was right. The moment I’m building a case for my own trustworthiness, I’ve stopped being curious about Hannah’s experience. I’ve left the relationship to defend my identity — and left her alone with hers.

The other thing I eventually had to sit with: if I was such a good man, how was it that my partner was experiencing so much turmoil trying to connect with me? I wasn’t doing anything to her. But I was well aware of what she was doing to herself in response to my behavior. Allowing someone I love to suffer with my actions, while insisting on my right to continue them, was not the behavior of the man I claimed to be. The identity I was defending was being quietly undermined by the defense itself.

That’s what makes identity confirmation compensatory. A secure identity doesn’t need the argument. The need to keep making the argument is evidence enough.

What shifted wasn’t that I decided Hannah was right and I was wrong. What shifted was that I finally saw us as two separate people, with two separate perceptual experiences, two separate nervous systems, making two very different meanings of the same circumstances.

When I stopped needing her to confirm who I was, I could actually see her. And what I found when I turned toward her fully was so much more nourishing than anything I’d been chasing elsewhere.

But I want to be clear: this isn’t a story about flirting. It’s a story about whatever you may be insisting is true about yourself — whatever picture you’re working to protect in the middle of a difficult conversation. Here’s what seems worth considering: if it’s genuinely true about you, it doesn’t require the other person’s agreement to remain true. It will be true whether they see it or not. And if it requires their agreement to feel true — that’s worth examining.

I work with couples, and the most common thing I observe is a hierarchy of values that neither person has made explicit, even to themselves. People enter a difficult conversation with a covert agenda: I want her to see me as reasonable. I want to prove I’m a good person. I want him to admit he was wrong. I want off the hook. Whatever form it takes, the agenda is usually some version of: “confirm me,” or “let me win.”

These motives are understandable. And none of them builds lasting intimacy.

The question I return couples to is simple: what do you actually want most? Because if what you most want is to feel genuinely connected — before, during, and after a hard conversation — that becomes the organizing motive, and it changes everything about how you move through the difficulty.

I genuinely believe two people who love each other can hold that motive all the time. Not perfectly — nervous systems activate before the thinking mind catches up. But “my nervous system activated” doesn’t justify unkindness. Those are two different things. If someone offered you ten million dollars never to raise your voice at your partner again, most people would find a way. Which suggests the behavior was a choice, not an inevitability. We’ve drifted as a culture toward offering people permission to behave immaturely — because they’re being “authentic,” because they’re expressing themselves, because their nervous system activated. I find that neither kind nor helpful. Holding a higher expectation of ourselves and each other seems to me more respectful and the faster path to genuine change.

What I’m describing can sound good and feel out of reach at the same time. Here’s why, and why it doesn’t have to.

Most of us are swimming in what I call outside-in language — the ordinary way people talk about their inner lives. You hurt me. You make me feel unseen. You’re being unreasonable. This grammar, built into the way we speak without our awareness, does something specific: it locates the cause of our experience in the other person. Which means identity confirmation doesn’t feel like a choice — it’s the water you’re swimming in.

Inside-out language works differently. When you speak in a way that locates the cause of your experience inside your own meaning-making rather than in the other person, something changes. You stop making the other person responsible for your experience of yourself. Your identity stops feeling threatened. There’s nothing left to defend.

This is at the heart of what my colleagues and I call the SAGE Process. Could you find your way to the motive I’m describing without it? Perhaps. But your use of outside-in language would keep pulling you back — quietly, automatically, before you’d made any conscious choice. The grammar of blame runs deep. Inside-out language is what makes a different way of relating not just theoretically possible, but practically available, moment by moment.

The move I return to — in my own relationship and with every couple I work with — has two parts. When things get hard, step back. Recognize that there are two different people here, with two different perceptual experiences, two different nervous systems, making two different meanings of what just happened. Let that be real. Don’t rush past it.

And then — as soon as possible — turn toward each other.

The stepping back isn’t the destination. Separateness isn’t the goal. The stepping back is what makes the turning toward genuine. When I stop needing you to confirm my identity, I can actually be with you. When the motive shifts from being seen correctly to connecting — something opens that the defensive posture had been making impossible.

For me, the motive worth organizing a relationship around isn’t being seen correctly. It isn’t winning. It’s this: I want us to be close. Before, during, and after.

This is the whole thing.

If this way of thinking about relationships interests you, we recommend reading The Overview Effect in Psychology as a companion piece. It offers a broader context for learning and living in the SAGE orientation.

On Tuesday, June 16th, we will hold a Zoom call for those of you who have been experimenting with our new SAGE Companion™ app. I’ll send the Zoom invitation on Monday.

Jake Eagle is a licensed professional counselor and co-developer of the SAGE Process, a language-based framework for psychological agency and relational health. He lives with his wife, Hannah, in Hawaii.