protective

I was just the sort of the protective one.

Why can’t this person erect the requisite protective barriers?

That's not petty -- that's protective."

We came to associate safety with a high degree of self-protective isolation; we might have become big readers, or fascinated by the animal world, or obsessed with music or computer games.

The narrator says his brothers “smelled my difference—my sharp, pansy scent” and didn’t know what to do with it: “All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud.”