Stonewalling is when someone shuts you down from communicating. He just “bails” on your efforts at communication, refuses to take you seriously; refuses to engage a discussion of your concerns.
He may ignore or dismiss you, express fatigue with you (and your concerns); he may listen without offering a thoughtful, respectful response, and then credit himself for having listened, perhaps even listened at a length he may complain about.
In any case his unthoughtful, lazy, dismissive, or flat-out non-response to your feelings and concerns captures the essence of stonewalling and will reflect his pure contempt for which he’ll take no responsibility.
Rather, he may depict you as a boring windbag who doesn’t know when to “stop talking,” or who’s always making or looking for “trouble,” without recognizing or owning how his insistent refusal to listen, his determination NOT to listen, actually provokes, passive-aggressively, your very instinct to “talk” and “pursue him” until he gives a meaningful response.
He may flat-out tell you he’s bored by, and uninterested in, the concerns you raise, regardless of how strongly you feel about them, and regardless of how strong your need to discuss them is. It may be that the more urgency you feel to broach your concerns, the more he’ll contemptuously stonewall you.
When your concerns pertain to the relationship itself, his rebuff will feel especially cruel and leave you feeling especially helpless. It will also very likely be dripping with some form of passive-aggressive, if not aggressive, contempt.
Now this is stonewalling, and stonewalling is a nasty, hurtful thing to do to someone; it leaves the stonewalled party feeling as negated as a person can feel.
You don’t have to be a sociopath to stonewall. Plenty of non-sociopaths stonewall. But many sociopaths are stonewallers, and the act of stonewalling itself, especially when it’s intentional, often contains the cold, callous attitude of the sociopath.
The stonewaller’s absence of empathy for the stonewalled party, perhaps even the relish the stonewaller takes in messing with the stonewalled party’s head, in watching her twist and squirm and perhaps make humiliating efforts and bids to be heard—there can be something actually sadistic about this.
Stonewalling will tend to elicit some common feelings in the stonewalled party—among them shame, anger, rage, infuriation, humiliation, desperation (to be heard), helplessness, and a sense of being driven crazy.
Stonewalling, then, is a form of “gaslighting” insofar as it can leave the stonewalled party feeling as if she’s speaking a foreign language inaccessible to the stonewaller even though she knows perfectly well the stonewaller speaks the language, literally, but either refuses to speak it or “acts” like he doesn’t.
This can have a “crazy-making” effect, as if he’s accusing her (as he may very well do) of speaking incomprehensibly.
Stonewallers, whether sociopaths or not, are seriously disturbed communicators. Their indifference to the stonewalled party’s experience, as noted, can be chilling. Their stonewalling often reflects character pathology, in which case they won’t change—they will always be stonewallers.
Stonewallers are destructive partners whom it’s best to avoid, and even leave, for your sanity’s and dignity’s sake. I make this strong suggestion in cases where the stonewaller refuses to assume total and genuine responsibility for his stonewalling, which is not always, but too often is, the case.
You need to stop banging your head against the “wall” (the pun is apt) trying to reach the stonewaller, because he is not reachable. Futility is what you are left feeling again and again, until you feel depressed and hopeless. The futility is not in your head. It is real, and will always be the experience with the stonewaller, who disowns responsibility for the suffering his stonewalling causes you.
Identify the stonewalling partners in your life; if they can’t, or won’t, take charge of their stonewalling, get them out of your life as best, completely and fast as you can.
(This article is copyrighted © 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of the male gender pronoun was strictly for convenience’s sake and not to imply that females aren’t equally capable of the behaviors and attitudes discussed.)
Speaking_Up
Thank you all, for all of your warm comments of support and knowing. The day the slimball I am involved with goes to jail I am heading straight to the hospital. I feel an actual energy drain and depression that is literally sucking the life out of me. If my granddaughter found out I have been in contact with her molester I would be doomed. I am putting everything at risk and I know it.
So I am going to the hospital and have a stay so that I can regain some of this energy that I’ve lost once again. This time I will have my book in hand explaining to the doctor’s why I fall the way I fall and maybe something positive will come out of that.
I need to tell someone (in person) the truth and try to figure out why I do what I do in spite of the risks.
Bless you all…
Ox Drover
Persephone, TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF FIRST is the “PRIME DIRECTIVE” and it is not bad, selfish or anything else to do so, it is GOOD SENSE. If we dont’ do what we need to do to take care of ourselves we can’t take care of anyone or anything else.
persephone7
Oxy,
I think this latest medical scare has had me distracted, perhaps not in a totally bad way – I’m thinking about me, thinking about my choices past and present and grateful so far things don’t look too bad…and just feeling a sense of I’m okay because I’ve gotten through alot in my life and I’m still standing, still have alot of people who love me – or even listen to me here and validate the journey.
So thank you for being my big sister on this, I know you care and it means alot – those are only three words but they are from the bottom and all the rest of my heart.
Ox Drover
Persephone, I”m glad that you are taking care of yourself….I just started reading a book called “Becoming your own parent” by Dennis wholey, it is “the Solution for Adult children of Alcoholic and other dysfunctional Parents.
I peeped at the back and one of the things that he mentions is that we don’t take care of ourselves, we are always finding excuses not to, or to do something for someone else…or “I will when X happens” and I’m working on taking care of me as well.
I should have gone to the doctor again over 3 months ago when I hurt my ankle and wasn’t satisfied with the care I got. It was changing doctors and I kept putting it off….now I’ve got a cast on my leg because I didn’t do it then. (BOINK ME!!!!!)
I hate to be a PITA or complain too much…but when the cast hurt my foot, I did go back and make him put another one on and so I am trying to take care of me! But it is something I do have to WORK AT! LOL (((hugs)))
persephone7
Oxy, Good grief, there’ll be no BOINKING from me, have to earn that privilege (?!)…Glad you got back to the doctor, that was part of my problem, too – just going to the trouble to find a doctor, get past all the initial expenses, etc. just for a simple checkup, etc. Anyway, got ‘er done…and so far, within my budget at that.
So let’s both keep ourselves on the front burners. Kind of exciting, like gee, what nice thing can I do for myself next! (and figuring out to pull it off…) never done this but ((((hugs))))to you, too! Off to bed, there’s my resolution again…
persephone7
And Oxy, I think I remember reading something by Dennis Wholey back in the Al-Anon days – think he has written a number of books but I will check that one out, thank you!
G1S
Persephone, I, too, have lost a lot.
I think the Universe took so much away form me because I needed to be forced to look at what I had left, me, and to realize that I had something very valuable all along, me.
Not only do Ps not get to define me, but neither did all the things that I lost. In the end, I saw that everything else was transient.
I am the only constant in my life.
“Self-caring” took on a new and powerful meaning for me.
marcyII
Every word of this article describes what my ex acted and did towards me. And yes, I did think I was going crazy. But I knew it was him that was intentionally trying to drive me crazy. Will be one year the day before Mother’s Day that I haven’t had contact. Yay!!!!!
angelina
I ammmm so comforted and grateful for this article. HE WOULD stonewall me… to the point… like two nights ago…
where I…. A LOVING…. GIVING… HEALTHY AND SMALL WOMAN….. started screaming…. crying…. grabbing him and his shirt! He was gone! he would not talk to me. he would not give me MY phone back.
he would not tell me whey he was packing up his things and leaving.
and then he says… I am crazy?
he was enjoying watching me squirm and cry….
and had asked me to marry him not 24 hours before?
thank god for this article. thank you lovefraud.
he was abusing me regularly with stonewalling. I did not know what it was…. did not tell anyone. he would shut down. ignore me. not call. not text. he knew it was hurting me badly… and that is why he was doing it….
he did not approve once that I left eh apartment… where I pay rent only ….
and went across street to Dunkin doughnuts to get both of us coffee at 6 a.m thought I would surprise him with some pumpkin coffee and donuts.
he did not text or call all day b/c I did that. He looked in my phone upon returning from dunkin donuts at 6 am. said I uprob left apt to call someone! WHAT?????!!!!!!
Please please tell me it is GOOD THAT THIS MAN LEFT ME.
THIS WAS ABUSE.
but it is quiet!