Hoping not to be a WAW

[aeolianchaos]

I'm sorry things didn't go well for you two last night.

I think that maybe there are dynamics to this that are hard to see under the circumstances, and I don't know enough to begin to propose what those are in your specific case, but I would consider that he is probably going through his own pain and his own troubles, and his defensiveness is a way of keeping himself and you from having to recognize that too much.

I doubt he really 'wants' to remain stuck. Getting angry or defensive is an example of 'short term gain, long term pain' because we have the pain of our anger and then the repeated pain of our failures to learn from it and grow.

I suppose there is a hurdle low enough that he could walk right over - what might it be?