Let me sit with what you just said for a moment, because “ruins” is a heavy word, and I want to honor that.
Stonewalling. Yes. It is one of the most painful dynamics I see in my office, and it is also one of the most misunderstood.
Here is what I want you to know first: stonewalling almost never comes from cruelty. It almost never comes from not caring. In the couples I have worked with over 16 years, stonewalling most often comes from someone who is completely flooded. Their nervous system has hit a wall. The part of the brain that does connection, empathy, communication has basically gone offline. They are not giving you the cold shoulder as a power move. They are drowning and going still.
That does not make it hurt less for you. I want to be clear about that. When someone you love goes silent, goes flat, looks away, leaves the room, your nervous system reads that as abandonment. And abandonment is one of the oldest, deepest fears we carry. So your pain is completely real.
But here is what I see happening in most couples caught in this cycle: one partner gets flooded and shuts down, the other partner feels abandoned and pushes harder to get connection, which floods the first partner more, which causes more shutdown, which causes more pursuit. You are both trying to survive the same fire in opposite directions.
The question I would want to ask you is this: which one are you?
Because the work is different depending on where you are standing in that cycle. If you are the one stonewalling, the work is learning to recognize your flood coming before it arrives and asking for a genuine break. Not a disappearing act, but a “I need 20 minutes and I am coming back.” If you are the one on the receiving end, the work is learning that the shutdown is not about your worth, even though it feels exactly like it is.
What I know for certain is that the cycle is the problem. Not you. Not your partner. The cycle.
And cycles can be broken. I have seen it hundreds of times. That is not false hope. That is just what I have watched people do when they stop fighting each other and start fighting the pattern together.
What does it look like in your house? Who goes quiet first?
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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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