What To Say (Instead of Nothing) If You Shut Down During Conflict

Because Total Silence Is Hurting Your Partner

Some people get real chatty during conflict, saying hundreds of words per minute. Frantic "I will make you understand" energy is often an unhelpful strategy (ahem, raises hand) because it introduces way more content to the conflict than is possible to actually address and will predictably make a fight thornier.

In contrast, some people shut down during conflict. They become so overwhelmed by the strong emotion they're feeling that their typical available cognitive processes slow to a halt. This can be called stonewalling, but I like the language of "shut down" because it's not a jargon term and more people will actually relate to it as their tendency because it aligns with their subjective experience.

How I Coped When My Partner Completely Shut Down During Conflict

As A Verbal Processor Who Craves Resolution, Not Space When I’m overwhelmed during conflict, I start talking and I don’t stop. I make a bunch of repetitive attempts to fix the situation that predictably just make it worse. My language gets sloppy; I exaggerate, and I gesticulate. I speed up.

Love Notes for Real LifeMarina Rosenthal

Whether you're someone who gets loud during conflict or someone who gets silent, your reflexive behaviors during fights are likely hurting your partner and relationship. These behaviors are often "understandable" in context in the sense that zoomed out, you can see why you might be ranting or sitting in silence...but they are nonetheless not helpful.

Online, it's popular to vilify either tendency. People who shut down just don't care, they're heartless. Or people who escalate with desperate pleas or monologues blow past their partner's boundaries.

I am generally not that interested in this kind of blaming discourse. Quite honestly, I find it really dull and exhausting.

What am I interested in? Providing tangible, actual support that can help you shift out of the behaviors that are hurting your relationship.

And so, today, I'm honing in on providing tactics to the "totally silent during conflict" club. I know you're here! You're not loud in the comments, but you email me and tell me that you're here, and you're trying to do better.

I'll lay out:

• 10 scripts for when you literally don't have the words,
• the mindset shift that will help you start approaching shutting down differently,
• what to do outside the moment to repair and break the pattern,
• plus a bonus tidbit from my own marriage.

Shall we?