To ask if this is what long marriage looks like?

[Thinkingof2026]

Married 8 years, together 18, two children (11 and 7). Husband works shifts and is often exhausted. I used to work shifts but recently got promoted to steadier hours. For many years DH has responded to minor issues by withdrawing and stonewalling ....days of silence, emotional shutdown. We’ve discussed it repeatedly, had counselling, nothing has changed. I used to not let it drop before, trying to get him to talk to me. But it mever got anywhere. So over time I’ve stopped engaging too when there's a dispute.

Im currently on just over a week of him stonewalling me.
I feel emotionally alone and worn down. I’m considering divorce but feel unsure and guilty. Is this just how long marriages are, or is this a sign it’s run its course?

I’m with mine 26 years, married for 10 and to answer your question, no, this is not what long marriage looks like.

Stonewalling for a week! Wow! There’s something wrong with him. It’s abuse. Emotional or Psychological abuse, where he is intentionally doing it to punish you or control you.

I've been with DH over 25 years, that's not normal
Not to say we've never disagreed but I couldn't stand living with someone like that

I would have told him to shut his cake-hole!

F**kn cheek sulking for 4 blinking years!

Together 39 years, married 35.
I have never experienced what you describe.
I have a long list of other grievances (noisy, sport-obsessed, increasingly right of centre, stinks the house our cooking bacon etc etc etc) but he shows and tells me very frequently that he loves me. He’s simply never, ever behaved in the way you describe.

It's unkind.
What's the point of a partner who is unkind?

People who have grown up in healthy homes and seen healthy conflict don't use the silent treatment to punish or control other people.

Chances are he hasn't ever learned how to deal with conflict in a healthy way, maybe as a child he didn't feel safe talking about his feelings or wasn't allowed to ask for anything or voice his opinion so silence is his safe go-to responseto conflict, but he's an adult now, that is for him to recognise and deal with, not your job to try and 'fix' his communication problems.

As others said, it isn't what a healthy long term relationship looks like.

Stonewalling and the criticism are damaging you, your children, and the relationships. I wouldn't say it's a sign of a relationship running its course, but him refusing to recognise the harm he's causing to change it would be

I'd recommend looking at some of the Gottman's writings on this, if only cause they have some practical steps to take as a starting point to move from:
https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-criticism/
https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-stonewalling/

I grew up in an awful household, and resources like these helped me figure things out.

25 years married, we do argue but no stonewalling as you describe. One of us night be a bit sulky for a couple of hours, that's about it.

Withdrawing to calm down for a few hours to avoid an argument, totally fine (unless you're married to me - I'd rather have a massive row and be over it in 10 minutes).
But a whole week? Not OK.

He's emotionally absent.

He is dealing with difficult emotions and he's learnt, probably since childhood, to hide away and disappear. This makes him feel safe and he gets relief. Sadly, in contrast you're probably feeling extremely hurt and upset.

You then make the move to reconcile, or he feels better and wants to go back to normal and the cycle repeats itself. This has been going on for 18 years, it works. So he'll be doing it again.

You might be asking yourself why does he do this to me and not anyone else. Its because you are the one in his life that demands the most emotional connection from anyone else. So he cuts you off so he doesn't need to deal with any emotional demand. This makes him feel safer.

You naturally withdraw too. I mean how are you supposed to make conversation with someone who clearly doesn't want to talk to you.

You try to talk to him. He either deflects (blames you, you're not talking to him), denies or plays the victim ( you're always having a go at me). He does these 3 things so that you don't raise it up with him again and he doesn't need to deal with this and he can keep repeating the cycle.

The emotion he feels when you bring it up is, he's not good enough, shame. It makes him face feelings he doesn't know how to handle, he feels vulnerable and doesn't know how to deal with it.

The issue is him. He needs counselling. But it's only any use if he recognises that he has issues. And that is most likely near impossible for people like him.

It's not normal in a long term marriage. Your marriage wasn't even long term when it started by the sound of it, it's just him

Not normal.doesnt sound like a healthy relationship at all.

No, this is emotional abuse.

We’ve been together more than 30 years and no, this isn’t what it looks like. Not now, not ever. What you’re describing is an emotionally abusive relationship in which he holds you to ransom with sulking and stonewalling. It’s unlikely to get better, so the choice you need to make is whether you still want to be living like this in another 10 or 20 years. I know what my answer would be.

Please get your children out of this environment. He is emotionally abusing you and they are watching.

It’s not only the stonewalling, though, is it? Even worse is how he treats you about ‘getting things wrong’ like the wrong potatoes or whatever. You’ve tried to explain how it makes you feel, but he doesn’t care; he has you right where he wants you. If he cared about you he would take steps to change.

Married 45 years. My DH is a sulker and could ignore me for days when we first married. I was distraught. Then something switched and I started calling him out. He was shocked. I think he learned it from his parents who could ignore each other for weeks! I once spoke to his DM about it and she said it was better than arguing. There was no way I was going to live like that! Things improved but he still has a tendency to do it. I either tell him to pack it in or I pretend I haven't noticed he's ignoring me and carry on chatting to him. Lasts about 5 minutes now.
OP, it sounds like there may be other issues going on for you so you need to think carefully about the future for you and your children.

In a way it doesn't matter whether you are prepared to label his behaviour abusive or not. A relationship or a partner can be miserable and shit without having to qualify for a diagnosis of 'abusive'. And who wants to stay in a miserable, shit relationship? You don't need any proof of abuse, or any analysis or anyone's permission to end your relationship.

He sounds like a passive aggressive twat tbh. And 'that's just how he deals with things' is no excuse. You can choose not to be with someone who 'just deals with things' like that. And no it's not just how long marriages are. I've been married for 22 years and we don't do and never have done ignoring and stonewalling.

Poor you. This sounds awful.

Totally don't blame you for starting to do it back, but you don't want your children looking back and thinking it was 'six of one'. So stop now and you'll be the one they'll trust.

Also, as pps have suggested I think this is often a learnt behaviour from people's upbringing. I've known two people from families where this is completely normal - mum's not speaking to grandma, sister's not speaking to dad, mum and dad haven't spoken since Tuesday etc etc. Unbelievably rude behaviour that people would never get away with outside the family but seem to think is absolutely warranted inside it. The only reason to say this is that if you actually do love him and want to salvage the marriage this may mean he could change the pattern with enough prodding from a relationship counsellor.

That said, I'd be out of there! The silent treatment, the broccoli and potatoes.. sod that.

Your husband behaves in a childish, unpleasant and cruel way. He clearly doesn't appreciate you and enjoys punishing you. These are some of the most effective ways to kill love.

Meanwhile you're flourishing in your career, your children by the sounds of it will understand (and perhaps welcome escaping the atmosphere), and your friends are ready and waiting to see you being you again, full time.

Any good relationship hinges on communication, where each partner puts in an equal effort to solving problems and working on the relationship itself. Your 'D'H has opted out of this despite your efforts and there's nothing you can do to fix it. You either tolerate it or you leave. Don't sink to his petty and immature level.

That’s what abusive marriage looks like. Stonewalling is a form of abusive. My ex (5 year relationship) used to do it and I never realised how much it impacted me until I left. Being ignored in your own home is normal.

My husband now has never done that. Definitely not what long term marriage looks like.

As another pp said, whether or not you want to label it as abusive behaviour isn’t as important as how you feel about it and whether or not you want to carry on living like that. You don’t have to justify your feelings to anyone.

My husband is similar, but in his case it started after a brain injury that precipitated a personality change. We have been together for 35 years now and had 15 years together before the injury. He went from fun, demonstrative, communicative (we used to talk about everything constantly and really were each other’s best friends) and really laid-back to moody, hyper-critical and refusing to discuss anything, using the silent treatment regularly.

I seriously considered leaving at one point, as it can be a very lonely life, but obviously I love him and ultimately wanted to stay and support him. We have worked on it together though and after all this time he’s a million times better, but for that to work, you both have to really want his behaviour to change and the relationship to work.

My dh knew he had changed and why, was aware he was upsetting me and still loved me enough to want to put the effort in. He wasn’t being deliberately cruel, he had just lost the ability to connect and communicate with me through no fault of his own and needed to put the work in to re-learn those skills. I honestly don’t think I would have stayed if he had deliberately chosen to treat me like that and we didn’t have a long, happy history together to work on getting back to. As others have said, it’s not modelling healthy relationships for your dc either.

The thing to remember OP is that some people are consciously abusive and others are unconsciously so. Neither is ok.

We all have less than ideal responses to stress that we learn in childhood/young adulthood and it can be difficult to overcome them. I used to be a “brush is under the carpet” person because I had to walk on eggshells as a child. My husband talks things to absolute death. We’ve both had therapy and can now meet in the middle. We can recognise these Pavlovian like responses in ourselves and choose to overcome them.

If you husband isn’t willing to overcome whatever in him makes him treat you this way you do not have to put up with it.

I, along with everyone else here, it seems, would say it is controlling because his behaviour is stopping you from either resolving whatever the real issue is or identifying the nature of the problem or agreeing on ways forward to try and improve the situation - he has all of the control and you, the 50/50 partner in this relationship - have none - he is taking away your share of control... so of course, it is controlling.

Is he acting like an adult do you think? Does he deal with all problems this way? Do you think he is blaming you for "whatever-the-problem-is"?

Something needs to change and unless you get your heads together and try and come up with some ideas you have your feet set in concrete. I dread to think of the impact on your kids and I say that because my kids are just in their early 30's now and I know (from frank conversations with them) that the problems we had with stress about workload, job security and unemployment were things that they very definitely felt and I can say we under estimated how much of an effect all of this had on them... I thought they seemed fine at the time.

Married 8, together 18 really doesn't seem that long to me TBH. We were together 19 years before we even got married but that was from 12 through to 31 and we've just turned 64 and our relationship has never been the way yours is now in spite of many, varied ups and downs - the kind of things that most couples experience.

Do you think (and I'm speculating here) that your husband learned this behaviour from watching his own parents deal with problems in the same way? Change really is long overdue IMHO - it really is time to do something - I doubt many people would put up this for long but regardless, you're very unhappy, you and your kids only have one life - how many more years of this do you want for all of you?

Your husband seems physically worn down with work and maybe there is pressure and an unsupportive workplace - maybe he just plain hates his job.

Consider this: How do you think he's going to be coping in 3 or 5 years time when he's older?

It's going to get harder isn't it? (I guess). So, I understand, it may be difficult or may seem difficult to get out of one job or line of work or career and into something else - it usually is difficult - but imagine if he got made redundant, for instance... he'd have to face that problem of changing anyway wouldn't he? If work stress and/or depression is the problem he needs to start having a conversation with you about what can be done. It's bloody terrible the way some jobs and employers just crush people - (and it's not weak or flawed people at all IMHO) - it's no life worth living is it?

I think you need to try and bring it to a head ASAP - this is no way to live. I'm really sorry to hear about your situation.