Stonewalling in Relationships: What It Really Means (and How to Break the Cycle)
A Brief Overview of the Four Horsemen
The Gottman Institute describes four destructive patterns that predict relationship distress: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. These patterns don’t mean a couple is beyond help, but they are strong predictors of disconnection if they go unaddressed.
Criticism often sounds like “you always” or “you never,” where the focus shifts from the behavior to a partner’s character.
Defensiveness might look like counterattacking or making excuses instead of taking responsibility.
Contempt shows up as eye-rolling, sarcasm, mockery, or belittling—and research shows it’s the single biggest predictor of divorce.
Stonewalling is different. While the other three are usually habitual responses, stonewalling can be a choice—or a shutdown response from the nervous system. Understanding which is happening matters, because the path forward looks very different.
What Stonewalling Really Is
At its core, stonewalling is disengagement during conflict. It can look like silence, withdrawing, or refusing to respond.
As punishment: one partner pulls away to shut the other out, using silence to punish or control.
As shutdown: the nervous system floods and the body goes into protective mode, almost like “playing dead.” The person isn’t choosing to withdraw—they’re overwhelmed and unable to engage.
Flooding often shows up when conflict feels unsafe or ineffective. For people who grew up in volatile homes, silence may have once been the only safe strategy. The Gottman Relationship Checkup even screens for flooding, because it’s such a common driver of stonewalling.
What Stonewalling Looks Like
Punishment-style stonewalling: clenched jaw, crossed arms, furrowed brow. Anger sits under the silence.
Shutdown stonewalling: blank or “lost” face, slumped shoulders, distant or darting eyes. The person looks emotionally gone even if they’re still in the room.
Neither pattern moves the conversation forward—they’re both signals the nervous system is overwhelmed.
ADHD and Stonewalling
When ADHD is part of the picture, rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD) often makes stonewalling more intense.
What RSD is: an extreme shame response to perceived rejection or criticism. It’s not a formal diagnosis but a widely recognized experience for many people with ADHD.
Why it happens:
People with ADHD often hear more criticism growing up—about focus, behavior, or follow-through.
The ADHD brain processes emotions with less filtering, so even mild feedback can feel like an avalanche.
Once shame takes over, the nervous system shuts down to cope.
From the outside, it looks like stonewalling. On the inside, it feels like drowning in shame.
Impact on partners: for the non-ADHD partner, this mismatch can be confusing and painful. What they intended as a small piece of feedback lands like a gut punch, and suddenly the other person is gone. Unless both partners learn to recognize the RSD spiral, the result can be repeated cycles of misattunement and distance.
Couples counseling can help here, not by eliminating RSD, but by slowing down the cycle. Partners can learn to create safer “containers” for hard conversations so that the intensity of RSD doesn’t hijack everything.
What It Feels Like for the Other Partner
Being on the receiving end of stonewalling is painful. Many describe it as hitting a wall: suddenly, their partner is “gone.” They may feel dismissed, unimportant, or even abandoned.
This reaction can easily feed the cycle. The more one partner withdraws, the more the other pursues—sometimes with louder words or harsher criticism. That escalation makes the overwhelmed partner retreat further, and round and round it goes.
Naming the pattern is often a relief for couples. Once you can say, “Oh, this is stonewalling—we’re in the cycle,” you can begin to step out of it together.
Breaking the Cycle in the Moment
The first step is awareness. You can’t shift what you don’t recognize.
If it’s punishment: notice the anger underneath and choose to pause before withdrawing.
If it’s shutdown: honesty is key. Say, “I’m flooded, I need a break.” Then take at least 20 minutes (sometimes longer) to calm your nervous system.
Ways to regulate:
Box breathing (inhale 4, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4)
Gentle stretching or a short walk
Cool water on the face
The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise (naming 5 things you see, 4 you feel, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, and 1 you taste to bring yourself back into the present)
For lighter shutdowns, quick grounding may be enough to re-engage. For deeper flooding, it might take hours—or even until the next day. The key is to return and repair.
And both partners play a role. If one is escalating with criticism or contempt, the other will almost always shut down. Sometimes the most skillful move is for both to disengage until the conversation can happen more calmly.
Repairing After Stonewalling
Even with the best tools, stonewalling will happen sometimes. What matters is how you repair afterward.
Name it: “I realize I shut down earlier. I wasn’t able to take in what you were saying.”
Take responsibility without shame: the point isn’t blame—it’s restoring connection.
Invite reconnection: “Can we come back to this tonight when I’ve had a chance to reset?”
Offer reassurance: remind your partner you still care, even if you needed space.
Repair doesn’t erase the conflict, but it helps rebuild trust. Over time, these moments become opportunities to learn each other’s nervous systems and create safety together.
Moving Forward
Stonewalling is often less about disinterest and more about overwhelm. With awareness, nervous system skills, and intentional repair, couples can step out of the cycle and move toward connection instead of distance.
If stonewalling—or ADHD and RSD—are showing up in your relationship, therapy can help. In my Asheville practice (and virtually across North Carolina), I work with couples to understand these patterns and build new ways of relating.
