Every couple has a conflict style. Some people talk things out. Some take space. Some scream into a pillow.
And then there was us: the Pursuer and the Stonewaller — a duet neither of us auditioned for, but somehow performed for nearly a decade.
For a long time, I thought this was just “how we were.”
But now I know: we weren’t just reacting to each other — we were reenacting everything we’d ever learned (or not learned) about conflict, connection, and self-worth.
His Silence (Which Was Never Really Silence)
He used to joke that he was “emotionally dead inside.”
He’d say it casually — like a one-liner tossed out in the kitchen — but now I don’t think it was a joke at all.
It was a quiet confession.
A truth he didn’t have the language for:
He had never learned how to turn his emotional switch on.
When things became overwhelming, he shut down completely.
Silence. Stillness. Withdrawal.
Not out of cruelty — but self-preservation.
I didn’t understand that then.
His silence felt like abandonment.
Like rejection.
Like confirmation that I was the problem.
So naturally, I did the exact opposite of what his nervous system needed.
My Pursuing (AKA Panic in Disguise)
If he retreated, I advanced.
If he said “I’m fine,” I said, “NO YOU’RE NOT!”
If he shut down, I turned up the emotional intensity like someone twisting a dial to 11.
And yes — I had a temper.
A real one.
I’d throw things — shoes, pillows, or the infamous pot of tomato sauce that I launched across the kitchen after my meatballs disintegrated into mush. (RIP to that batch.)
I’d shout — not at him, but at the frustration, the confusion, the ache of not understanding myself.
Then I’d cry.
Because in the end, that’s what all the anger really was:
grief in a louder outfit.
I wanted to be understood.
I wanted to understand myself.
How could I ask someone to “get me” when I couldn’t even get me?
The Loop We Couldn’t Escape
Eventually, our arguments always spiraled into the same ending:
Both of us silent.
Both of us retreating.
Both of us pretending everything was “fine.”
But it wasn’t fine.
It was that horrible, heavy silence — the kind that sits between two people who don’t know how to reach each other anymore.
Sometimes, in that silence, he’d turn to his computer or immerse himself in work.
And I’d just sit there, watching him, waiting for a flicker of emotion, a sign, anything.
Looking back, that’s on both of us.
He avoided.
I waited.
Neither of us moved.
I could’ve gone for a walk, picked up a hobby, called a friend — anything.
But I didn’t.
I stayed, hoping that if I stared long enough or asked enough times, he’d crack open.
Sometimes he did.
Barely.
He’d let me curl up on his chest, in a silence I mistook for closeness.
It was the only way he knew how to bring us back together.
And I clung to it like proof that everything was okay.
But it wasn’t okay.
Not really.
We were two dysregulated nervous systems trying to build a stable life on quicksand.
Ten Years of a Dance Neither of Us Knew the Steps To
This pattern was always there, but the last five years?
That’s when it became a full-blown choreography:
- He shut down.
- I pursued.
- He withdrew farther.
- I exploded.
- We sat in painful silence.
- Then pretended it never happened.
If we’d known then what we know now — about attachment, about emotional regulation, about conflict styles, about love languages — maybe things would’ve unfolded differently.
But we didn’t know.
We were doing the best we could with the tools we had.
Which, honestly, were basically plastic safety scissors and a butter knife.
A Simple Reflection
Looking back now, I can see exactly where I learned that pattern. Not because anything “terrible” happened when I was a kid, but because emotional distance is still a form of communication, and children soak it up like humidity in July. My parents didn’t really fight — not in the loud, dramatic TV way. It was more like a quiet retreat. A roll of the eyes. A heavy sigh. Muttering something underneath your breath. A door closing softly. A heaviness in the air. A conversation that never made it past the inhale.
As a kid, I didn’t have the language for any of that, so I just absorbed it. I mistook silence for safety. I mistook distance for calm. And somewhere along the way, I learned that when tension rises, you either withdraw… or you explode. Those were the only two settings I saw.
I’ve even talked to my mom about this as an adult — one of those deep, unplanned conversations where you suddenly see each other as two women instead of mother and daughter. And she understood. She got it. There was no defensiveness, no rewriting history. Just this shared recognition: “Yeah… that’s how we did things, isn’t it?”
That conversation felt like someone gently handing me the missing corner piece of a puzzle I’d been working on for decades. It didn’t fix everything, but it helped me trace the pattern back to its origin — which is the first step in breaking it. And I’ve spent the last few years doing exactly that: untangling generational knots, learning a new emotional vocabulary, and realizing that the patterns we inherit aren’t life sentences. They’re starting points.
What I Now Know — Years Later
Stonewalling wasn’t his fault.
Pursuing wasn’t mine.
They were symptoms, not sins.
He learned to survive by shutting down.
I learned to survive by pushing harder.
We were mirrors for each other’s wounds — not each other’s enemies.
And the biggest lesson of all?
You cannot talk someone out of silence.
You cannot chase someone into connection.
You cannot outrun your own unlived emotions.
We didn’t know how to love each other in the ways we each needed.
But we did love each other the best we could.
And sometimes, that’s the most honest truth you can tell.
-A
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