While a break will only lasts an hour or two, stonewalling can last for days or weeks. This behavior is unhealthy for both partners as it creates a sense of distance and emotional disconnection.
While difficult to stop, it is possible to learn healthier communication strategies to break the stonewalling patterns and improve your relationships.
Breaking the Cycle. Recognize and Communicate Your Feelings: Acknowledge your own emotions and the impact stonewalling has on you. Express your feelings to your partner using “I” statements, highlighting the specific behaviors you find hurtful or frustrating.
If the perpetrator still refuses to acknowledge the victim's existence for long periods of time, it might be right to leave the relationship. In the end, whether it lasts four hours or four decades, the silent treatment says more about the person doing it than it does about the person receiving it.
Stonewalling can be intentional or unintentional and is usually resolved by engaging in self-soothing techniques to foster constructive conversation.
To describe the communication issues his research predicts can end a relationship, Gottman dubbed them through a metaphor, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—love edition. Stonewalling is one of those four horsemen, which have been found to lead to breakups, alongside criticism, contempt, and defensiveness.
While a break will only lasts an hour or two, stonewalling can last for days or weeks. This behavior is unhealthy for both partners as it creates a sense of distance and emotional disconnection.
Communicating after the silent treatment is sensitive ground to cover, so keep it simple and state your boundaries and avoid emotional minefields. Often, the silent treatment is an indication that one or both people need a little bit of space to sort things out.
If you can safely do so, walk away when your partner gives you the silent treatment and do something you enjoy. If your partner is unwilling to change, it is important that you make your emotional and physical safety a priority.
So, if you are stonewalling and feeling flooded, say that you need a break using whatever signal, word, or phrase you and your partner have decided upon. Let each other know when you're feeling overwhelmed. Then, you need to walk away and do something soothing on your own.
John Gottman, a marriage therapist who did extensive research on stonewalling in partnerships, found men often react to disagreements with more signs of physiological stress than women do, and thus, they have been shown to be more likely to stonewall than women, often in an attempt to remain neutral or avoid conflict.
The antidote to stonewalling is to take a self-soothing break for at least 20 minutes and then re-engage with your partner when you feel calmer and are able to constructively express your views.
Acknowledge that the only way a stonewaller's patterns will change is if they are willing to change them. If you're the only one willing to work on the relationship, reconsider it. Aggressive stonewallers sometimes act like victims to protect themselves.
When stonewalling appears to be a power play or a method to control the partnership, that's toxic if not abusive. In those situations, you need to walk away from the situation and seek individual counseling to discern if this is genuinely a partnership you want to salvage.
The emotional effects of stonewalling include a sense of helplessness, worthlessness, and powerlessness. It can have a serious impact on a person's self-esteem. This is a natural response particularly, as stonewalling is widely considered a form of gaslighting.
Remember that silence can never be a solution to the silent treatment. Always approach them directly but in a calm and gentle manner. Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and talk in a private place. Make sure they are comfortable.
Remember, by practicing radio silence and by avoiding texting calling, you are actually making an effort to bring your partner closer. Post the silence period, he will certainly get back to you with open arms. So, to give him the chance to come back to you, allow him to go first.
Stonewalling can be a form of gaslighting when it is used intentionally to make people question their reality. Gaslighting involves causing other people to doubt themselves and their experiences. Being ignored can leave you feeling powerless and useless.
It is absolute poison to a relationship. As a matter of fact, relationship researcher John Gottman, who is best known for his ability to predict divorce with 94% accuracy, claims that stonewalling is the biggest predictor of divorce.
“Stonewalling is actually a learned defense mechanism that might stem from an unpleasant emotional or physical reaction someone has experienced in the past. Or your partner may simply not be able to express how they feel so instead they shut down,” Dr. Dannaram said.
10) Stonewalling your partner
Gottman and Gottman describe stonewalling as a relationship red flag.