Let me tell you what I see about a thousand times a year in my office.
When someone says their partner “won’t engage in conflict resolution,” what they usually mean is this: they try to talk about something that hurts, and their partner goes somewhere else. Shuts down. Changes the subject. Gets very busy all of a sudden. Or maybe he does engage but only to defend himself, and the actual problem never gets touched.
Here is what I want you to hear, and I mean this gently: your husband is not broken. He is scared.
Most men who shut down in conflict are not doing it to hurt you. They are doing it because somewhere along the way, conflict became synonymous with danger. Maybe growing up, conflict meant someone was going to lose badly. Maybe it meant chaos, or withdrawal, or punishment. His nervous system learned that the safest thing to do when things get hard is to go still, go quiet, or go away.
The clinical word for this is withdrawal. And what tends to happen in couples is that the more he withdraws, the more you pursue. The more you pursue, the more unsafe it feels for him to come out. The more unsafe it feels, the deeper he goes. You end up in a loop that neither of you chose and both of you are trapped in.
So here is what I would ask you to try, and I know it is going to feel backwards.
Stop trying to resolve the conflict. For now, just stop. Instead, get curious about what happens to him right before he shuts down. Not accusatory curious. Genuinely curious. “Hey, I notice when we start talking about this stuff, you get really quiet. What is happening for you in those moments?”
You are not asking him to be vulnerable on command. You are creating a tiny opening.
The other thing I want to say is this. “Conflict resolution” as a goal is often the wrong goal. The real goal is not to resolve the argument. The real goal is for both of you to feel like you are on the same team, that the relationship itself is what you are both protecting, not your individual positions. I call that Sovereign Us. That is where you want to get to. But you cannot get there by dragging someone through a process they experience as threatening.
What would help him feel safe enough to stay in the room with you? That is the question worth spending your energy on right now.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Stonewalling in Relationships: What Your Partner’s Silence Actually Means
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