Stonewalling: What It Really Means When She Goes Silent

So today I want to talk to you about stonewalling, which is your wife refuses to talk to you. I'm going to tell you what it is, I'm going to tell you why it happens, and I'm going to tell you how to fix it by the end of this video. So if this is your first time here, my name's Cody Butler and I work with men in late-stage divorce crisis. In fact, I've helped 3,000 men turn their marriage around after she said that she wants a divorce. So let me start out by asking you the question, how bad would things have to be in your marriage for you to go to your wife and to tell her that I refuse to have sex with you Not tonight, not this week, not this month, maybe I'm never gonna have sex with you ever again. How bad, how much pain would have to be present? What would she have to have done in order for her to put you in that position of never wanting to have sex with her? Well, understand, when you understand that sex to a man is the equivalency of communication to a woman, then we can start to understand just where a woman is in her mind. If she's refusing to have communication with you, then something has happened or is happening that is as bad as you refusing to have sex with her. So when a woman stops communicating or refuses to communicate with you specifically, there are only ever really two reasons that this happens. So the first reason is going to be that communication just becomes completely pointless to her. It's a waste of time. When she talks to you, she doesn't get a response. It's just useless. Why would you do something when you've learnt that there is no reason to do it? So when she talks, she learns that talking to you changes nothing. The situation that she's trying to improve through the communication and talking, nothing improves, nothing changes, and of course nothing actually gets resolved either. So the second reason that a woman would stop talking typically is that Communication is more painful than silence, and silence is painful. This is why I started out with the question, what would have to happen for you to refuse to have sex with your wife? That is the level of pain that communication is causing her right now, and she's choosing silence, which is painful, over communication, which is even more painful. So when she learns that, that talking leads to criticism, it leads to dismissal, it leads to anger, it leads to conflict, it leads to emotional punishment or repercussions. This is when she shuts down and when she stops talking. And I'm not here to point fingers or make judgments on people. One thing that I love to say all the time is let's let reality be our guide. I'm not your mentor or your guru, reality is. And if she's refusing to talk right now, then this is going on most likely in some shape, form, or fashion, and the sooner we can come to terms with that, the sooner we can actually start to turn this around. So what this leads to then is what I call the Communication Collapse Cycle. So the Communication Collapse Cycle, it develops in 3 stages. So let's run through those very quickly. So the first stage is going to be she tries talking to you, she tries to talk this out and nothing changes. She tells you what she needs to see from you, she tells you what you need to do, she tells you what she would like to happen, and it just simply nothing happens. It's basically just a waste of time. Stage 2, it then transitions into Stage 2, which is she actually starts to push harder for the outcome that she's looking for, and that just makes the situation worse. So this is where men start saying stuff like, "She's just a nag, she nags all the time, she never stops asking for stuff." stuff. Nothing I do is good enough. The woman can't be made happy. She's never happy. Nothing makes her happy. Nothing I do is good enough for her. These are the things that you start to hear in Stage 2, and this is where she's pushing to get the needs met. She's pushing harder and harder because it's gone from being a nice-to-have— she would like these needs to be met— to now it's essential that these needs get met. So this is a level of escalation, and then of course Level 3 is the Stonewalling stage where she withdraws, she stops talking, and this is where she's just realized that either it's an absolute complete waste of her time, she's never going to get what she's asking for, you either don't understand what she's asking for, you're not capable of bringing what she's asking for, or some form or fashion of that. So one thing I say is I talk to a lot of men in this situation and they go, "Well, this is not true, Cody. My wife just doesn't like talking." And my response to that unfortunately is like, "No, no, your wife likes talking, brother. She doesn't like talking to you. She's getting conversation from somewhere." And I'll ask the question, "Well, does she talk to her friends? Does she talk to her family? Does she talk to coworkers?" And the answer is, "Yes, of course she talks to friends." It's like, "Yeah, exactly. She's talking. She is talking. She's just getting what you should be providing in the relationship, that emotional connection, that emotional safety, that bond." She's now gone outside of the marriage to get it. In the same way that if a woman stops giving a man sex, he's going to get that gratification somewhere. He's going to get that need met somewhere, albeit whether it's porn, whether it's an affair, or whatever way it is. When a woman says, "My husband doesn't like sex," again, it's the same answer. No, he does like sex. Unfortunately, the actual more accurate point is he doesn't like having sex with you. He is getting that need met somewhere. So the communication need is going to get met by women, as is the sex need is going to get met by men. So understand this: Stonewalling is not the beginning of the problem. This is a lagging indicator, meaning that stonewalling is telling you what has happened previously in the relationship. It's really not telling you what's happening right now and what's going to happen in the future. It's predominantly telling you what's happened back there in the past, it's an indicator that things were broken for the last however long. So by the time she actually stops talking to you, she's already, she already believes that you don't have the ability to stop causing her pain. You don't have the ability to solve the problems that she's looking for solutions to. So most men only actually notice this silence when it becomes too late because she's tried or she's in Stage 3 now. Stage 1 and 2 has already caused the communication collapse. and now the fact that she's not talking has made this a very difficult situation to resolve for the reason that when communication stops, problems can't be solved. If your marriage has got issues right now, you've got to talk through those problems. You've got to work through those issues, and if she's refusing to talk to you, then that isn't going to happen. This creates an obstacle that becomes very, very challenging, and this is why if your wife is stonewalling you, it's very serious. You've got to take this seriously and you've got to fix this because until you solve this problem, she's not going to talk about any of the problems, and until she talks about the problems, none of those problems are going to go away. So I've got a workshop on that specifically, what needs to happen to solve this problem. I'm not going to go into that in much detail in this video, but there's a link in the description. You can grab that, and if you're liking this content, give me a thumbs up, give me, give me a, leave a comment and subscribe to this channel. It really helps to produce more content. So the result of all of this is going to be that the relationship goes into collapse. It goes into the collapse stage, right? She's got problems, she needs to talk about these problems, she can't, she can't talk about the problems. There's nowhere left to go but out of the relationship at this point. This is just the logical progression of things. So the core truth to understand right now is that the man believes that the silence is what's causing the problems within the relationship. The fact that she refuses to talk right now He believes that that is the problem. She sees this as, she sees not talking as the result of the problem. She sees the problem here, his inability to respond to her requests, and at this point the problem's over. She's resolved it by just not talking. He thinks this is the beginning. This is not. This is the end of the problem for her. She's getting off the field. You're getting onto the field. So, what some of the things that the man will say in this situation when she stops talking is, "She just refuses to communicate. She won't talk to me. She's just shut down. Why won't she work on this? I'm willing to work on this. I'm willing to work through our differences. I'm willing to go to therapy. I'm willing to go to counseling. I'm willing to do all of these things." Or he'll say, "She just doesn't try anymore. She's just refusing to try. She's just given up. That's the way that he sees it. What he doesn't see is that the stonewalling is a consequence of everything that happened here. So she made an effort here, she maybe suggested counseling here, she maybe suggested therapy here, she maybe suggested a lot of stuff all the way through here, and he didn't respond to that. Now that she's serious, he's ready to respond, so there's just a mismatch of stages here for the man and the woman. So the irony here is that the very behavior that has trained her silence, that the man has trained her silence, is now getting blamed for the silence. He trained her that communication was painful. Maybe he shouted, maybe he was aggressive, maybe he just didn't respond, maybe communication was a waste of time. We've covered all of that stuff, but whatever it is, he's trained her that talking to him is pointless or painful, and now he's blaming her for— he's saying, "Why won't you work on this relationship? Why won't you? I'm willing to work on this. Why can't we talk this through? I just want to talk it through." So he blames her for the breakdown because all he sees is the moment that he's in. He's not seeing the bigger picture. If you want to save your marriage, if you want to stop your divorce, this is critical across the board. You have to learn to see the big picture from the start to the finish. We typically only see the stage that we're in, and we only see the response from the other person of the stage that we're in, and we don't understand the motivation that brought us to that stage. And if we have input, if we have responsibility in causing the problems in the earlier stages, as we do in this situation here, and then we blame the other person, whether you're a man blaming the woman or the woman blaming the man, when you blame the other person for the problems in the stage that you're in, when they're actually just a lagging indicator a sign of problems that happened earlier on, you're going to get called a gaslighter. This creates a second wound and it makes it even, makes it way harder to solve the problem, right? Because now the blame for the failure is being placed on her when she knows good and well that she tried to solve this problem, she just didn't get a response from you. So again, this is not about blame, this is not about being right or wrong, this is about being effective in saving your marriage. Do you want to be right or do you want to be effective? Do you want to be right or do you want to be married? Now, don't— if you want to be married, then blame has got to be taken off the table here. It does not help anybody anything or the situation to place blame, and in fact, it really doesn't matter who's to blame. The reality is it's both of you. You're both to blame. It's like, it's probably 50/50 in the blame category, but that doesn't matter, right? Like, all we want, like, the goal here needs to be to be effective not to be right. So what happens here when the blame is placed somewhere else is resentment grows, the distance increases in, in the relationship, and the more that she is blamed for the shutdown, i.e., you won't talk, therefore we can't fix it, therefore it's your fault, the more she's blamed for it, the more, the more it's going to cause the shutdown to happen. Less desire to reconnect, less desire, the minimal desire to re-engage in the relationship at that point. So how do you fix this? This is the, this is the question, right? I'm going to have a quick drink and then we'll jump into that. Now we understand the problem, we understand how it's caused, now let's talk about the solution. So right now, your words don't matter to her. You've got to understand this. This is actually, at this point, this is a behavioral problem, and you're not gonna, you're not gonna talk your way out of a problem that you behaved your way into. You can only behave your way out of a problem that you've behaved your way into. So forget about words at this point, they don't matter. The only thing that you need to understand, or the only thing you have to understand is that your behavior is the only thing that's going to make a difference here. So you've got one goal and one goal alone, brother, if you're in this situation of stonewalling, to make every interaction with her non-threatening, valuable, meaningful, and pain-free. So many of us, right, let me, let me, let me just tell you quick a little story quickly. Like, so many of us, we don't like going to the mailbox, right, because it's usually a problem. Anything in the mailbox is going to be junk, which is just pointless junk mail, or it's going to be a bill or something that we don't want to know about. Maybe you've gone speeding, been speeding, and you got a fine. I'm in Australia, that's how we get our fines, is in the mailbox. So very rarely is anything valuable in the mailbox. But what if every, every letter in the mailbox was $1,000? Then the situation changes immediately from going to the mailbox once a week or once every 2 weeks because you just don't want to go there, and every now and again you've just got to go, well, I have to see what's in there just in case to where you check the mail 3 times a day. This is the goal, right? Right now communication with her is a bill, it's a fine, it's a penalty notice, or it's just junk mail. That's every word that comes out of your mouth to her right now. But think about this, turn it around. What about if every sentence that came out of your mouth was $1,000? Would she seek out that conversation? Would she seek you out? The answer is yes. So this is what you have to do. You have to make every interaction valuable, and at this point, no interaction is better than the interactions that have been. So if your interactions create pain or pointlessness, you're just going to reinforce what she already believes to be true. So if you have no ability to do that at this point, just step aside and just go silent. I'm your advocate, think of me as your advocate. You have the right to remain silent. My advice to you is to take that advice, use it and remain silent until you can figure out, or you can get some advice and input as to what actually is valuable, what does she value, and what's going to move the needle. So for the next 7 days, no making her wrong. Don't argue with her, don't tell her she's wrong, just stop making her wrong. That's causing her pain, and nobody wants to be wrong, right? Nobody wants to— we don't want things pointed out that we're doing wrong. Stop that, because that's causing her pain, or it's at the very least, it's pointless, right? Which is not what we want. Stop defending yourself. Doesn't matter if you're right, doesn't matter if you're wrong. What matters is that you're effective, and if you're defending yourself, you're not being effective, you're doing damage. Stop arguing. Again, my question: Do you want to be right, or do you want to be married? Doesn't matter if you're right. You do not need to argue with her. Every argument is a negative, it's a mark in the negative column in your debt towards her, communication debt. Stop it, it's not helpful. And stop pushing for answers. When are we going to talk about this? Are we going to talk about this? Can we do this? Again, this is causing her more pain, which is the problem, right? So don't chase her, don't pressure her, don't try to fix this with conversation, don't do any of that stuff. Again, I'm being repetitive here because it's very important and I need you to understand this. Every interaction has to be at very best neutral, ideally positive. Any, any of these things are going to reinforce what she already believes. She's made her mind up that communication is pointless. She's made her mind up that communication is, is painful. She's not looking for reasons to talk to you. She's looking for more reasons to build a case of why that is right. You have to stop giving her those reasons at this point in time, or you're going to have— you're just compounding the problem and making it harder and harder and harder to fix. Fix. So you're not trying to move the conversation forward here, you're trying to stop the situation from getting worse. This is disaster management, this is damage control, this is not you rebuilding the marriage, this is you stopping it from getting worse at this point. So if you're experiencing this in your marriage right now, if you're seeing this, then your marriage is closer to the end than you think it is. It's further along. Stonewalling is one of the final stages before she actually makes that decision. This is her literally putting the bags in the car before driving off. So if this is you, you need to take this very, very seriously. So there are steps that you can take here. I have a workshop specifically in the, the link in the description to where you can watch exactly what you need to do. It's going to open your eyes and show you the mistakes that you've been making and how easy this actually is to turn around. But you can't fix a problem you can't see, and you can't fix a problem when you don't understand the solution. So watch that, like this video, give it a, uh, subscribe. And I've also got 7 steps right here that are going to show you what to do if your marriage is close to the end. 7 mistakes that you absolutely must not make if you do not want to speed this up. So that's it. God bless you. We're going to jump over to Q&A with the private clients. If you're interested in joining the private group, uh, the Win Your Wife Back coaching program, there's also a link in the description. We'll catch you in the next video.