Indefensible: when you cannot prove what you feel

Two people have been arguing for hours. Both have explained themselves repeatedly. Neither feels heard.

One brings examples, dates, research and a sequence of reasoning. The other brings a sense that something is wrong between them. They can feel it in the quality of their conversations, although each incident sounds insignificant when examined alone.

“Give me an example.”

They do. The example is explained away.

“Then tell me exactly what you mean.”

They try. Their words become the next thing under examination.

What happens when someone can neither abandon what they perceive nor defend it in a form their partner will accept?

And what happens to the partner who is being asked to answer a claim they cannot understand or check?

Both can feel trapped.

Indefensible does not necessarily mean unjustifiable. Sometimes it means having no usable means of defence.

A person may have words for their experience and still lack the kind of evidence being demanded. “I feel less welcome with you” is intelligible. Proving it is another matter.

Their partner might reply: “I invited you over three times this week.”

That matters. It challenges one possible account of what happened. But does it settle how welcome those visits felt? Equally, does feeling unwelcome establish that the invitations were insincere?

Perhaps both people have brought relevant information. Perhaps the difficulty begins when either piece is expected to cancel the other.

Philosopher Jean-François Lyotard described a differend: a dispute in which the available rules of judgement cannot fairly accommodate both parties. His work raises a question for relationships: who decides what counts as an acceptable defence?

If only observable actions count, the experience of those actions can disappear. If felt meaning settles everything, actions and intentions can become impossible to defend.

What might each person be trying to protect?

The person asking for evidence may be trying to prevent an interpretation from hardening into an accusation. “You have stopped caring” is a painful claim to face when they believe they have been showing care.

Specifics can make a concern understandable and a response possible. Without them, how could they distinguish a change in their behaviour from a misunderstanding, or know what might help?

The person speaking from felt experience may be trying to preserve something that disappears when broken into separate incidents. One distracted reply proves little. Neither does one missed question. Yet the accumulation may have changed how the relationship feels.

Could their partner examine each incident accurately and still miss the pattern? Could the person sensing a pattern be joining events that have different explanations?

Both possibilities deserve room.

These are approaches, not fixed kinds of people. Someone who relies on intuition at work may demand explicit evidence during conflict. The same person may need facts in one conversation and recognition in another.

Can we know something before we can defend it?

Michael Polanyi argued that we can know more than we can tell. Eugene Gendlin explored how felt meaning can contain distinctions that have not yet become explicit.

We recognise this outside relationships. A musician senses that a passage has lost its movement. A cook knows a dish needs something before identifying what. Explaining every component may help, but the explanation is not identical to the perception.

Might someone similarly sense a relational change before they can describe its ingredients?

That possibility deserves attention. It remains a possibility: intuition can notice something consequential, and it can misread. An explicit argument can correct an impression, and it can organise incomplete evidence into a convincing mistake.

Could we allow a perception to become a question before requiring it to become a defensible conclusion?

“Something feels different between us. I do not yet know what it means.”

What would help both people stay curious at that point?

When the attempt to be heard becomes evidence against you

As the argument continues, the person who feels dismissed may become more urgent. Their partner may then struggle to follow them, or interpret the intensity as a reason to distrust their account.

Sue Campbell examined how descriptions such as “emotional” or “bitter” can function to dismiss a speaker. In a relationship, could “you are too upset to be rational” close the very conversation the upset concerns?

Yet distress does not make sustained shouting tolerable or productive. The listener may need the exchange to stop. How could they request a pause while making clear that the concern will receive attention when they return?

And could the distressed person accept a limit on how the conversation happens without having to retract what they are trying to say?

Holding two accounts without forcing a verdict

Dialectical thinking asks whether apparently conflicting accounts can each contain something true.

“I intended care” and “I experienced pressure” can coexist. Together, they raise questions about how care was offered and what made it feel pressuring.

“You have made considerable effort” and “I am still lonely” can coexist. Together, they invite examination of what that effort provides and what remains missing.

Some factual claims will contradict each other and need checking. Both approaches being valid does not make every conclusion equally well supported.

But must a person prove their partner wrong before their own experience can matter?

Could they distinguish what happened, how it affected them, and what they believe it means? Could they recognise the experience while keeping the explanation open?

Perhaps the first shared task is deciding what they are trying to understand. Whether a promise was kept? Whether care was communicated? Whether either person has capacity for what the other needs?

Different questions require different kinds of attention.

When someone says, “I cannot prove it, but something is wrong,” could the response make room for investigation without demanding agreement?

And when someone says, “That account does not fit what happened for me,” could their disagreement remain part of the inquiry?

Can a relationship make room for what is still indefensible, while preserving both people’s right to question what it means?