When Fairness Becomes a Defense: The Subtle Cost of False Equivalence in Relationships

(This piece was originally published in Elephant Journal and is shared here in an adapted form for my therapy blog.)

There is a way conflict can sound calm, fair, and emotionally mature while quietly eroding clarity. It often shows up as neutrality: “We both played a role,” or “This keeps happening with us.” Sometimes that language reflects genuine shared responsibility. Relationships are complex, and there are moments when both people truly contribute to a dynamic.

But sometimes that language does something else. It flattens reality in order to reduce discomfort.

I’ve come to notice how destabilizing this can feel when responsibility in a given moment isn’t actually shared. False equivalence occurs when two disproportionate actions are framed as equal in order to restore emotional balance. This doesn’t always come from manipulation. More often, it comes from an inability to tolerate the discomfort of being the sole agent of a rupture—even briefly.

Emotional balance can feel safer than specificity, but emotional balance is not the same as relational truth. Accuracy matters. Context matters. And not every moment is symmetrical.

Sometimes one person misses. Sometimes one person withdraws. When responsibility is neutralized too quickly by the person who created the issue—intentionally or otherwise—the person who names the issue often ends up carrying more than their share. How could they not, when the actual issue is never clearly identified? Over time, this can quietly erode trust in one’s own perception. For many people, this erosion doesn’t end when the relationship ends—it shows up later as trauma symptoms that don’t make sense unless you understand what the nervous system has been carrying. 

When Conversations Keep Going Backward

False equivalence doesn’t only show up in major conflicts. It can also appear in ordinary exchanges. One person says, “I don’t like it when you do this.” The response is, “Well, you’ve done that before too.”

On one level, this may be true. We are all hypocrites at times. No one lives in perfect alignment with their values all the time. But when conversations repeatedly move away from what is happening now and redirect to a past moment, nothing actually moves forward. The original issue remains unresolved, and the relationship becomes stuck and circular. Instead of staying with the present experience, the discussion turns into an accounting exercise.

If something genuinely bothered someone in the past, the responsibility to name it belonged to that moment. Repair requires real-time ownership. When past behavior is introduced later as a defense—rather than having been named when it occurred—it stops being about resolution and starts functioning as protection. The other person is left carrying something they were never told was a problem, as if they were expected to retroactively mind-read and self-correct.

At that point, responsibility is no longer about clarity. It becomes a shield.

Responsibility Is About Belonging, Not Fault

Responsibility is often confused with blame, but they are not the same thing. Writer Mark Manson draws this distinction clearly when he explains that responsibility is about ownership, not fault. He uses a stark example: if someone is born without arms, that is obviously not their fault—but it is still their responsibility to figure out how to live their life.

Fault asks who caused something. Responsibility asks who has to deal with it. Those are different questions.

In relationships, responsibility is about belonging. It’s about knowing what is mine to tend to and what is yours—not so anyone can be punished, but so something can actually be resolved. When responsibility is vague or artificially shared, nothing gets accomplished, not because people don’t care, but because no one knows what they are meant to take care of.

This is why false equivalence feels so unsettling. When a specific miss is reframed as mutual, responsibility no longer belongs anywhere. The issue becomes emotionally diffused, repair stalls, and the same rupture is likely to repeat—often with more intensity.

When Defense Replaces Responsibility

This pattern isn’t always intentional. Often, it reflects discomfort with being the one at fault. Being the sole agent of a miss, even briefly, can activate shame or fear. Neutralizing responsibility restores emotional regulation. Shared language softens the moment and makes it feel safer.

But when this becomes a consistent strategy—used primarily when accountability is required—it can slowly erode the relationship itself. Over time, one person ends up doing more explaining, more clarifying, and more defending simply to have their present experience acknowledged. That isn’t mutual accountability. It’s emotional labor.

Staying With What’s Happening Now

Healthy repair doesn’t require perfection. It requires presence. Repair sounds like, “I missed that,” or “I wasn’t here,” or “I see how that landed.”

Neutralized repair may feel calming to the one using the language, but it often leaves something unresolved. It restores equilibrium without restoring trust.

It is not harsh to name what’s real. It is not unkind to be exact about impact. Healthy relationships don’t need both people to be equally at fault in order for repair to happen. They simply require both people to be willing to hold what’s theirs.