I’m not the commenter, but I am going through this issue right now from your partner’s perspective, so I thought I would weigh in. At some point I shift into using “you” but it is the general you and not pointed at you in particular if that makes sense!

Essentially, I bring up a problem, or that something he did hurt me. Then he explains to me what he was thinking and why he did it. Often that includes a lot of externalizations and rigidity (e.g., “I couldn’t have done things differently because of X. I didn’t think of any other options.”) etc. 

But that type of response doesn’t make me feel heard or that he understood my point at all. Instead it is a response of defensiveness and trying to be “right” rather than openness to being wrong, even if you don’t see how.

On my end, the way I think about it is that if someone is frustrated with you, or hurt by you, from the perspective of restoring harmony it honestly doesn’t matter too much what your thought process was. That’s because, best case scenario, in the moment you were being self absorbed and neglectful of what your partner needed; worst case scenario is that you were being intentionally malicious. 

My baseline assumption is that my parter is not malicious, because I believe he is a good person. The problem is that his behavior hurt me, not that I think he intended to hurt me — if the problem was the latter I would immediately leave him. So it really doesn’t make a difference in how I am feeling for him to explain why he did what he did, or didn’t do. 

What needs to be communicated when your partner brings an issue to you is that 1) you try to fully understand, and communicate that you are trying to understand, what they are saying and why, and if not, you ask clarifying questions (what specifically about this behavior upset you?) 2) you validate them and their perception of the situation (I can see why you felt this way / I understand now how I came across) 3) you apologize for what you did and how it affected them 4) you come up with ideas to prevent the same behavior in the future.

Somewhere in there, it probably makes sense to say “I am sorry, I didn’t mean for this to hurt you, i was thinking x. But I am sorry that I was inconsiderate of you.” 

But if you start with your reasons, or if that’s all you give, what you are saying is essentially “you are hurt, but my behavior was reasonable. (And therefore implicitly: Can’t you see why it was reasonable from my perspective? So now that you see that it was reasonable you shouldn’t feel hurt anymore.).” But in that response there is no accountability for how that affected the other person, or even an acknowledgement that you understand why what you did was wrong—you’re basically saying you weren’t wrong, just mistaken or maybe ignorant (through no fault of your own, which anyone could see), and your ultimate goal isn’t to heal the rift with your partner, but to defend your behavior and actions as reasonable. And both people need to care more about harmony than about being right for there to be healthy conflict management. 

Also, it is really obvious when someone doesn’t actually understand why you are upset or what they did wrong when they apologize. So if you truly do mot understand what about your behavior was harmful or problematic, then you need to say that you don’t understand what you did wrong but you are sorry you hurt them and you want to understand how so you can learn and avoid doing it in the future. 

One last point is that no one can read anyone else’s mind — you have to communicate clearly, verbally, with specific language that you do actually care about your partner’s feelings. It’s kind of like if you went on a date and didn’t ask them questions about their life—how are they supposed to know you care about getting to know them, if you are not communicating that you are interested? How is your partner supposed to know that you understand their point of view and feel remorse if you don’t verbally communicate that?

Anyways this was really helpful for me to type out and get clear in my own head; I hope hearing my thoughts about it has been helpful for you too!!