Four. Stonewalling, which is often not what it looks like

Stonewalling is shutting down. No response, a flat face, leaving the room, going quiet for a day.

From the outside it reads as contempt or as punishment. Often it is neither. A person who is physiologically overwhelmed genuinely cannot process what is being said to them, and shutting down is what a flooded system does. It is worth both of you knowing that, because the interpretation of it causes more damage than the behaviour.

That does not make it harmless. A three day silence in a marriage is a punishment whatever it started as. The difference is what you do with it, and the honest version of it sounds like this: I cannot do this right now, give me twenty minutes and I will come back to it. And then coming back.