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 Welcome back to another episode of the road of life podcast with Meredith and Craig over the last few episodes, the last four, well, three before this one, including this one, the last four, we are talking about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. So John and Julie Gottman, mega researchers in this relationship marriage space have identified four critical behaviors or things that really are predictors of a relationship that is doomed for lack of a better term, I think is a term we've used.

And so the first one was criticism, which we did a couple of weeks ago. And then we did contempt, which is, you know, criticism on steroids a little bit. that was two, two weeks ago. And then last week we did defensiveness. Defensiveness. Thank you. . And shifting blame essentially.

And this week we are doing stonewalling. Yep. So if you haven't listened to the first three, definitely go back because they're great. They build on each other. And I'm starting to see how they're so interconnected. Yes. All four of them. They're very interconnected. So if you haven't listened to the first three episodes, go on back episode 70, 71, 72, and then jump into 73 here.

And we'll talk stonewalling. Yeah. So what is stonewalling? Stonewalling is basically the emotional equivalent of I'm out or slamming a door or walking out. Like it's the emotional equivalent of like, , I'm not in this. , I'm not dealing with this. I'm out. Like this is on you. Like I'm toast.

I'm, out. Yeah. And I know contempt is, the number one predictor of divorce and contempt is the, You had to pick one horseman, it would be contempt, but I put Stonewalling at number two. I think stonewalling is the second most toxic of the behaviors because it just shuts everything down. Yeah.

Criticism is bad. Defensiveness is bad. Like it certainly does not lead to a productive conversation and moving forward in your relationship. But at least there's something going on between the two of you. Yes. Whereas stonewalling is just, you put up a wall, we're done. We're done here. And it's the silent treatment or avoiding any sort of Connection with the other person.

Yeah. It's very toxic. Well, I mean, think about it. What do they do in prison to punish the prisoners even more? They put them in solitary, they isolate them. And when you're in a relationship and the other person stonewalls you, they've isolated you. It's the, equivalent of being put into solitary.

It's the relationship equivalent of solitary confinement. Yeah. So for me, stonewalling is, yeah. The second most toxic of all of them because , there's nowhere to go. well, you're in a, relationship with someone, right? So when, something comes up in your relationship, it's going to require.

People to resolve the conflict or whatever's going on to resolve the issue. If one person just outright refuses to just I'm out, like if just completely refuses to deal with the issue, it's what do you do? You can't, it will never get resolved. , it's like quicksand, like you're, stuck.

You can't move forward. You can't go, anywhere. You're stuck right where you are because the other person, right? is stonewalling you and refusing to engage in the conversation. Yeah. And stonewalling again is the silent treatment. It's avoiding eye contact or any sort of like connection. It's basically pretending like you're busy or that you're not interested in dealing with whatever this is.

Physically leaving the rooms. It's like you said, the emotional equivalent of slamming the door. So like removing yourself from the situation, just like getting up and leaving is stonewalling. I need to have a discussion with you. Let's, resolve this. Nope. I'm not having this conversation. I am, not interested.

And then getting up and leaving. That's the other one I was going to say is like, besides just walking away, it's also just the shutting down of the conversation, like, Hey, we need to talk about something. And the response being, we're not talking about this. I'm not having this conversation. That's a, stone wall.

And it's like, no, but we are having this conversation because it's important for us to work through this issue so that we can get on the other side of it and strengthen our relationship. We're not having this conversation to upset you on purpose.

We're having this conversation so that we can move forward. Yeah. And it's really important to remember or to understand why stonewalling happens because It's usually because someone is overwhelmed emotionally. Like, it's just too much for them, and they don't know how to deal with it.

Yeah, I think that's an important point, because when you are getting stonewalled, it's incredibly frustrating. Yes. And so, it makes it harder to feel empathy for the stonewaller when you're being stonewalled, because you're frustrated that you want to work through something together, and the other person does not seem to want to lock arms with you and figure it out.

They want to check out of the conversation. And so it's important to build a little bit of empathy for the stonewaller in that they are feeling completely overwhelmed emotionally. And maybe their cup is completely full. They have no room to. Yes. Take anything else. Which is great from a 100 percent responsibility.

Like we talk about the 200 percent marriage and taking 100 percent responsibility. And, and having some empathy for the person who's being the stone waller. However, there is a responsibility for sure for on the stone waller to understand why, why they're emotionally overwhelmed and why they're unwilling or unable in this moment to have this conversation and to figure that out and deal with it.

Yeah. And it goes back to what we talked about for criticism and for contempt, which is, Taking care of yourself, essentially, like not letting yourself get to the point where you're so completely emotionally overwhelmed. You can't possibly have a productive conversation. If you've gotten to that point, you're not taking care of yourself.

So before, if this happens to you regularly, you need to take a look inside. And what do you need to do so that you do have some bandwidth to have conversations? I think it's about really equipping yourself with some strategies, tactics, emotional IQ, your emotional intelligence and really figuring out how you can implement some things that will help you with your emotions so that you're able to better engage and interact when things get stressful.

I guess if you will. I think it happens. The stonewalling tends to happen in uncomfortable conversations. Like, we don't usually stonewall a happy conversation where we're laughing and having a good time. I've never seen it. I've never seen it. We stonewall conversations that we don't want to have. That don't feel good, that are uncomfortable, that feel like they're going to be difficult.

Rather than have to go through that difficulty or that discomfort, I'm just checking out, I'm not doing it. Yeah. It's a, Defense mechanism, but there's a reason it's one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse because it's super toxic And we have to learn because the impacts of stonewalling are huge it creates emotional distance like the person who's being stonewalled Just is like like, we have an issue here, like it has to get addressed.

I'm the only one who wants to work through this. I'm here on an island all by myself. Yeah. You've completely emotionally abandoned me. Yeah. In our relationship. You feel rejected. Yeah. You feel unheard, disrespected. Unworthy. Unimportant. Mm hmm. Yeah, all those things. And it can lead to More stonewalling and frustration it leads to what we talked about in contempt Which is that resentment that simmers under the surface?

yeah, if you're constantly being stonewalled in your relationship, then you're gonna have a Level and it's gonna get higher and higher but you're gonna have a base level of resentment That's constantly simmering under the surface and that's gonna come out as contempt which is You know the worst of them all but it's going to come out as contempt So now you've got stonewalling from one person and contempt from the other person And then you can picture it right like someone's like, yeah, well i'm not talking about this.

Oh, here we go again Yeah, you eye roll eye roll. Here we go again. You're too whatever to have this conversation, And then you can see how criticism comes out because like you don't even care about this relationship. Like it means nothing to you. They stack. Yeah. They stack on one another. Yeah.

They're so interconnected and they're so toxic. They lead to each other that it's, the Gottman's really nailed them. Yeah. They did. . That's why they're like the rock stars. A hundred percent. Yeah. The Rolling Stones of relationship. Yeah. Research. . For sure. So,

the antidote. What's the antidote? The antidote to stonewalling. Yeah. Well, the antidote as the stonewaller, we kind of touched on it a little bit, but let's build it out. It's not letting yourself get to the point of complete overwhelm, where you're unwilling to have a conversation. Take care of yourself.

It's similar to the ones we've talked about before. Self care. Yeah, take care of yourself. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Mm hmm. Always make sure you've got a little bit of bandwidth. And I think the keeping the perspective of this conversation is meant to bring us closer. This conversation is meant to get us through something difficult.

Same we talked about in defensiveness. Tell yourself the story of the positives that will come from this conversation. It's kind of like we talk about all the time. Every moment you have with each other is an opportunity to connect or disconnect. And when you stonewall it, it's obviously you're disconnecting.

But if you just take the approach of this conversation when we have it, is As long as we do this productively, and if we're not stonewalling, it's going to get a lot easier to do it productively. But when we, come together and we have this discussion, we get through this issue, we can grow through this.

You can grow through disagreement. So it's really important to be able to have the conversation to be able to do that. If you don't, you're actually actively disconnecting from each other. Right. And so if you've gotten to the point, Like, let's say you're hearing this for the first time, you know you're a stonewaller or you're feeling maybe a niggling tickle inside that oh, I might do this, , so you're going to start working right now on making sure that you're resting and recharging and always having a little bit of space in your cup so that you can have the difficult conversations, and then also when the next one comes up and you have the urge to stonewall, like, it comes, it just comes up and you're like, I'm not having this conversation.

Instead of saying it like that, like we talked about last week in the stimulus and response in that space, try to, take a beat and say, you know what? I need 10 minutes before I can have this conversation. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. Can we take a break? Yeah. Can we take a few minutes? But the key is to make sure that there is like some sort of Can we do it back?

Yeah. We're going to do it in 10 minutes. We're going to do it in 20 minutes. I just need a 15 minute break. Yeah. Whatever it is. This is not a shutdown of the conversation. This is a pause. My emotions are high. I need to take a quick break. I need to go outside and ground. I need to have a glass of water.

I need five minutes to breathe to myself. And then can we come back in 10 minutes? It's a quick pause on the conversation. It's not an indefinite pause on the conversation. It's a short pause, and we're going to circle back. And the key is to recognize that that's coming up for you. That flooding sensation of emotions, like, you know, my heart's racing, I'm starting to sweat, whatever it is that comes up for you physiologically, recognizing that and then saying, you know, okay, just give me 20 minutes.

I'm going to go out like to your point, like grounding or getting out in nature. Great for bring the emotion down, but, doing that and then circling back and finishing that conversation so that you can grow through the disagreement or whatever it is. It's a good habit in the spirit of a 200 percent mindset.

To if you're the stonewaller in general and the one that's asking for the break Go outside walk around the block do whatever go to the bathroom Take some deep breaths, whatever it is that you have to do come back and initiate the conversation again Like you you're the one who pressed pause So in the spirit of taking full responsibility come on back and re initiate the conversation.

I'm ready to keep going Let's keep going and as the stonewallee in that situation when you're getting stonewalled, let's say this, your partner hasn't listened to this episode yet, but you're going to share it with them because it's an important episode for you. But if you're getting stonewalled, trying your best to keep your emotion low.

I understand where you're coming from. I know you're uncomfortable. I know this is a difficult conversation, but we're going to get through it together. Showing some empathy to the person who's feeling emotionally overwhelmed, but still making known that the conversation has to happen.

I care enough about you and this relationship that we have to get this resolved. Yes. If we don't, I'm worried about our relationship. Correct. We need to get this resolved. So it's having empathy for them, but also having a boundary that this is something that has to get done, but at the same time showing that it's for everyone's benefit because you care that much about the relationship that you need to get it resolved.

Yeah. And so those are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. We, started with criticism. which is basically Attacking the person's character instead of just addressing a specific behavior. Exactly. Contempt, which is basically criticism on steroids. Criticism with an act of superiority. It's looking down on them and the eye rolls and the, really, are we doing this again?

The dismissiveness. Then it's defensiveness, which we talked about last week. Shifting the blame, making excuses. Not my fault. That's your fault. You didn't remind me. And then now this week stonewalling. I'm not having this conversation. We're done here. I'm not having this conversation. Yes, we are having this conversation because I love you because I love you.

And because , we always say it because Choosing to avoid discomfort in the moment creates long term dysfunction. And so I love you enough that we need to work through this momentary uncomfortableness as this moment of discomfort so that we can have a constructive, productive, loving relationship forever.

Yeah. And so those are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And there's a reason that John and Julie Gottman. talk about them so much. The research shows that if your relationship has those, those are the greatest predictors of a relationship that is doomed to fail. And so it's really, really important that if you recognize any of those four and a lot of times there's more than one because they stack like we talked about.

They're so interconnected. Yeah. But if you're seeing hints of those, we need to root those out quickly. In order to really get your relationship back on track. But the really cool thing is, is that there's an underlying theme that we've kind of thought about. Talked about throughout all four of them.

The antidote is just taking 100 percent responsibility for your marriage every aspect of your marriage is your responsibility and if you do that and your partner does that Then there is no criticism. There is no contempt. There is no defensiveness and there is no stonewalling it's the key to eliminating the four horsemen of the apocalypse if you can take that mindset of Everything is my responsibility and everything is their responsibility.

When there's an issue, I'm going to hit it head on and immediately and we're going to address it. And that person does the same thing. You eliminate all four of those and your relationship is in such a better place. And we talked about it through the lens of marriage right there, but this applies to every relationship in your life.

These four horsemen can show up with your sister, with your father, with your mother, with your brother, with your kids, with your You name it. Your business partner, your friends, your colleagues at work. These horsemen can show up in any relationship. And if it's an important relationship in your life, you need to work at Extracting these from your relationship because every relationship is doomed to fail if these show up not just romantic relationships.

Every relationship. Your relationship is like a garden and these are weeds that will quickly take it over. You need to eliminate these immediately. Yeah. So, As always, we talk about a lot of great stuff, but it doesn't mean anything if nothing's done. We need to take action. So what's one thing that you can take from this episode about stonewalling that you can now implement in your relationships, whether it's a romantic relationship or a relationship with a family member or a business partner, whatever it is, what's one thing that you can take away from this, episode and implement to make your relationships better.

And who were you going to share this episode with? There's somebody. I know you know a stonewaller. It's either you, and maybe you need to share it with someone that you stonewalled, or you know some stonewallers that maybe don't even realize they're doing it. So share this episode so that all of your relationships can get so much better.

And with that, that wraps up the series on the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and we will catch you next week for another episode of the Road to Life podcast. 📍  Okay. Before we wrap up, we just want to remind you about something really special we've created. The Infinite Relationship Mastermind. It's like a VIP backstage pass for anyone looking to level up any and all of their relationships in their life. And we're not just talking about the relationship with your spouse.

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