Why I Shut Down During Arguments

She's talking. Her voice is getting louder. You can feel the walls going up inside you. Your jaw tightens. Your vision narrows. You hear the words but they're getting further away, like you're underwater. Then you're gone. Not physically. But gone.

She calls it stonewalling. Your therapist calls it avoidance. You don't have a word for it. You just know that when conflict starts, something inside you shuts off. Like a breaker flipping. And you can't flip it back.

What's Actually Happening

Your nervous system is flooding. The Gottman Institute calls it Diffuse Physiological Arousal (DPA). Your heart rate spikes above 100 BPM. Cortisol and adrenaline dump into your bloodstream. Your prefrontal cortex, the part that handles logic and communication, goes offline. Your brain switches from "talk this through" to "survive this."

You're not choosing to shut down. Your body is making the choice for you. The question is: why does conflict trigger a survival response?

Where the Pattern Started

For most men who stonewall, the pattern started long before marriage. A parent who raged. A household where conflict meant danger. A family system where expressing needs led to punishment. Your child brain learned: when things get loud, go inside. It kept you safe then. It's killing your marriage now.

Some men learned it from a different angle. Not explosive households but emotionally cold ones. Families where emotions were weakness. Where "man up" was the only advice. You didn't learn to shut down from fear. You learned to shut down from training. Either way, the result is the same: your wife reaches for you and hits a wall.

What She Experiences

When you shut down, she doesn't see a man in distress. She sees abandonment. She sees the most important person in her life disappearing right in front of her. So she escalates. Gets louder. More intense. Because she's trying to reach you. And the harder she pushes, the further you retreat. The Gottmans call this the pursue-withdraw cycle, and it predicts divorce with over 80% accuracy.

Breaking the Pattern

Step one: name it out loud. When you feel the flood coming, say the words: "I'm flooding. I need 20 minutes." Not "I'm fine." Not silence. Actual words that tell her what's happening inside you. This is not weakness. This is the most masculine thing you can do: face what's happening inside you and communicate it.

Step two: come back. The 20-minute break is not an escape hatch. Set a timer. Breathe. Let your heart rate drop below 95 BPM. Then go back. Sit down. Try again. The return is where trust gets rebuilt.

Step three: trace the wire. Where did you learn this? Whose voice triggers the flood? What's the oldest version of this feeling you can remember? This is Phase 3 work in the Lion Protocol: mapping the 57 triggers that run your nervous system so you can respond instead of react.