That’s a question I want to sit with carefully, because I think the answer matters a lot depending on which side of it you’re sitting on.
Here’s what I know after 16 years in this room with couples: stonewalling is almost never emotional abuse in its origin, but it absolutely can become abusive in its pattern and its impact.
Let me explain what I mean.
When most people stonewall, they are not doing it to punish their partner. They are doing it because their nervous system has essentially gone offline. John Gottman’s research on this is pretty clear. When someone stonewalls, their heart rate is often through the roof. They are flooded. Their body has decided that continuing this conversation is a threat, and it has shut the door. That is a trauma response. That is a scared person going silent because they do not have the capacity in that moment to stay present.
So the intention is usually self-protection, not control.
But here is where it gets complicated, and I want you to hear this clearly: impact is not the same as intention. And in a relationship, impact is what lives in the body of the person left on the outside of that silence.
If your partner goes silent every time you raise something hard, if you have learned to shrink your needs because the silence feels like a wall coming down, if you are walking on eggshells wondering what will trigger the shutdown, that is doing real harm to you. That harm is real regardless of what your partner intended.
Now, stonewalling crosses into abuse territory when it becomes weaponized. When someone uses silence deliberately to punish, to control, to make you feel crazy or small or unworthy of response. When it is paired with contempt, with threats, with cycles that leave you feeling like you are losing your mind. That is a different animal entirely.
So the question I would ask you is this: does your partner come back? After the shutdown, is there repair? Do they acknowledge what happened and try to reconnect? That matters enormously.
A partner who stonewalls and then returns, who says “I got overwhelmed and I shut down and I’m sorry,” who is willing to work on their capacity to stay present, that is someone struggling with emotional regulation. That is workable.
A partner who stonewalls and then acts like nothing happened, or who uses your reaction to the silence as evidence that you are the problem, that is where I would start asking harder questions about safety and power in the relationship.
The difference between trauma and abuse often comes down to this: does the person take responsibility for the impact of their behavior, and are they willing to do the work to change it? Because you deserve to be heard, even when your partner is struggling to stay present.
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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.
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