Understanding Gendered Expression of Disconnection

When couples come to see me, they're usually stuck in a painful loop. On the surface, the fight is about dishes, money, parenting, or sex. Underneath, something else is happening. Emotional safety has been eroding for a while, and neither person quite knows how to stop it.

‍Dr. John Gottman spent decades studying couples and identified four behaviors that reliably predict relational breakdown: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. He called them the Four Horsemen, and once you learn to spot them, you start seeing them everywhere, including in your own relationship.

Here's what I've noticed in my work with couples, though: these patterns rarely look identical from one partner to the next. In heterosexual relationships especially, men and women tend to express and experience the Four Horsemen in different ways. This isn't because one gender is more flawed or more difficult. It's because we're raised with different rules about what emotions are acceptable to show, and those rules shape how we fight when we feel scared, hurt, or unseen.

Understanding this doesn't excuse hurtful behavior. But it does something more useful than blame ever could. It gives you a way to understand what's actually happening underneath the argument, which is usually the first real step toward changing it.

1. Criticism

More commonly expressed by women.

Criticism is different from a complaint. A complaint sounds like "I'm frustrated the dishes didn't get done." Criticism sounds like "You're so lazy, you never help around here." One is an invitation to fix something together. The other is an attack on someone's character, and it tends to make the other person defensive rather than responsive.

In my experience, and in Gottman's research, women initiate conflict with criticism more often than men do. This isn't because women are naturally more negative or more difficult. In a lot of heterosexual relationships, women still carry more of the emotional load. They're the ones tracking the relationship's temperature, noticing the small ruptures, and trying to hold things together. When that effort goes unnoticed for long enough, criticism can become the only way left to be heard.

‍Men are less likely to criticize outright, but they'll often reach for sarcasm or passive-aggressive comments instead, especially when they feel cornered or blindsided.

What's underneath it: A longing to be close to someone, paired with a fear that if you say what you actually need out loud, you'll be met with silence.

2. Defensiveness

‍Shows up in everyone, but not in the same way.

‍Defensiveness is what happens when we hear blame and go straight into self-protection instead of staying curious. It feels justified in the moment, but it blocks repair every time, because it centers on being right instead of being understood.

‍Women often defend themselves by over-explaining or rationalizing, sometimes even turning the blame back on themselves before their partner has the chance to. A lot of this comes from an old, quiet pressure to get everything right and to avoid being labeled "too much" or "too emotional."

Men are more likely to counterattack, dismiss the issue, or check out of the conversation altogether. When men feel emotionally flooded, defensiveness often functions as armor against shame, especially if they've grown up believing that vulnerability equals weakness.

What's underneath it: A need to feel like a good and capable partner, and a fear that conflict is proof they're failing at that.

3. Contempt

Equally damaging, but it wears different faces.

Contempt is the most corrosive of the four, because it isn't just disagreement. It's disdain. It communicates "I'm better than you," and it's one of the strongest predictors of divorce in Gottman's research.

Women may express contempt through a sharp tone, eye-rolling, or biting sarcasm, often after feeling emotionally abandoned for a long stretch of time.

‍Men may express it through mocking, put-down humor, or condescension, frequently when they feel powerless in the emotional part of the relationship and don't know another way to regain footing.

‍Either way, contempt doesn't appear out of nowhere. It builds slowly, from resentment that never got repaired, until one or both partners quietly conclude that empathy isn't available anymore.

‍What's underneath it:Grief. Loneliness. A growing belief that the relationship has stopped being a safe place to land.

4. Stonewalling

More common in men, and often misread.

Stonewalling happens when someone shuts down and pulls out of the interaction entirely. They stop responding, look away, or leave the room. For the partner on the other end, it can feel like total abandonment.

Gottman's research found that men stonewall in roughly 85 percent of instances in heterosexual couples. That doesn't mean women never disengage. It means men default to this strategy under stress far more often.

When a man stonewalls, he might look calm on the outside. Internally, his body is often in full flood, heart racing, nervous system in survival mode. Many men were never taught how to stay present when things get emotionally intense, so shutting down becomes the only tool they have.

Women are somewhat less likely to stonewall early in a relationship, but after enough failed attempts to connect, they can withdraw too. It just tends to look different: going numb, growing distant, quietly checking out.

Why it's so often misunderstood: Stonewalling looks like indifference from the outside. Underneath, it's usually overwhelm.

What's often happening internally, especially for men:

"I don't know how to fix this."
"I feel completely outmatched here."
"If I open my mouth, I'll only make it worse."

What tends to help:

Learning to notice flooding in your own body before it takes over
Taking a real break, with an actual plan to come back to the conversation
Rebuilding trust slowly, through consistent, small acts of repair

When Stonewalling Looks Like Fawning

Here's something I think gets missed a lot in conversations about the Four Horsemen. While men more often withdraw through silence, some women respond to conflict by fawning instead. It can look cooperative, even generous. But it's frequently a survival strategy, and it functions a lot like stonewalling does, just aimed inward instead of outward.

Fawning is the nervous system trying to stay safe by appeasing. Instead of leaving the conversation, the fawning partner leaves themselves. They shut down their own honest reaction in order to keep the peace.‍ ‍

This can look like:

Smiling or soothing the other person, even while genuinely upset
Agreeing quickly or apologizing just to end the tension
Redirecting to the partner's needs while quietly ignoring their own
Avoiding anything direct, because directness feels too risky

What's actually happening underneath is that the fawning partner may seem present and engaged, but internally they're often dissociating, disconnecting from what they really feel. Somewhere along the way, they learned that saying "I'm angry" or "I need something" leads to conflict or rejection, so they stopped saying it.

So while men more commonly stonewall outward, some women stonewall inward, appeasing and disconnecting from themselves instead. This is often why the fawning partner gets labeled "the calm one" in the relationship, while their own needs quietly go unmet year after year.

What tends to help:

Naming fawning as a protective pattern, not a personality trait
Helping the fawning partner find their voice again, slowly and without pressure
Building both partners' capacity to tolerate discomfort and tell the truth
Practicing structured repair conversations where both people get to be honest

Why These Differences Matter

Once you understand that these behaviors usually come from fear, overwhelm, or old conditioning rather than malice, something shifts. Blame starts to loosen its grip, and compassion has room to enter.

Without that understanding, couples tend to fall into the same exhausting cycle: one partner escalates to be heard, often through criticism, while the other withdraws to survive, through stonewalling or fawning. The harder one pursues, the further the other retreats, until both people feel lonely in a relationship they're still technically standing inside of.

Recognizing gendered patterns here isn't about reinforcing stereotypes. It's about being honest that our survival strategies were shaped long before we met our partners, by families, culture, and everything we were taught was safe or unsafe to feel.

The Path to Repair

The goal in couples therapy was never to eliminate conflict. Conflict is normal. The goal is learning how to move through it without losing each other.

In session, this usually looks like:‍ ‍

Identifying the specific cycle you and your partner fall into, and where it came from
Learning to recognize flooding in real time, in your own body, so you can slow down before reacting
Practicing vulnerability in a way that feels structured enough to be safe
Building small rituals of repair and appreciation that add back up over time
Helping both people feel like they can be fully known and still be safe‍ ‍

Love rarely fades because of a hard conversation or two. It fades when emotional safety quietly disappears and nobody knows the way back to it. That path can be rebuilt. It just tends to happen one honest moment at a time, not all at once.

If any of this feels familiar, it might be worth learning a different way of relating to each other. I work with couples on breaking these cycles, rebuilding emotional safety, and finding their way back to each other.

Learn more

‍ ‍You don’t have to navigate disconnection alone—and it’s never too late to begin again.

To learn more or schedule a consultation, visit francescawehrlcsw.com.