Stonewalling

Printer-friendly versionSend to friend

Six years ago, a close family member decided to clean house in her relationships.  I was one of the discards.  She resigned from a charitable board of directors, rejected my mother who was in ill-health, hacked the intimate friendship with me that had been previously very close for all of our adult years.  I have grieved for six years.  No effort on my part yields the prized conversation that I crave.  I have been stonewalled against her resistance.  My reaction has cycled through all of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief minus one:  denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.  I have stopped short of acceptance - I cannot accept her rejection of our friendship.  While she is most certainly going through her own processing, I cannot accept that she left me in addition to all of the others.

I divorced years ago.  However, the loss of friendship trumps the divorce.  This relationship, more than any other loss, gives me compassion for the clients I work with in mediation.  It is easier to be the one who chooses to leave (I left my marriage) than the one who is left (she left me).  Had I not had this loss, I might not fully understand the grief of those working through divorce.

Life is messy – it goes without saying.  I entered into the field of conflict resolution to seek the answer to the question of “WHY?”  Why do people who have previously loved cease from loving?  The strategies that those in conflict employ are endlessly interesting.  Negotiating issues in mediation for my clients, while concurrently observing their utilization of well-documented patterns of conflict behavior, makes me quite frankly jealous when there is resolution.  The high percentage of resolution for my mediation clients makes it is hard to accept that resolution is beyond my grasp for this sibling relationship.

The primary reason, it seems, is that it truly does take “two to tango.”  While the opposite is touted, as in, “It takes two to tango – two to fuel the fight”, my experience is that it takes one to choose to leave the dance.

I recently worked with a couple that divorced.  The husband was so miserable in the marriage that he actually left the country for a period of years to get away from the marriage.  While he was gone, the wife was under the impression that his sole reason for working abroad was to pay down bills that had accumulated over time.  However, when the bills were paid, he came back to the US to work and promptly filed for divorce.  I worked with them both, successfully, through their divorce agreements in a neutral manner; however, I empathized with the spouse who was left.  She looked like a deer that was paralyzed in the headlights of an oncoming car… afraid to move and thoroughly confused because she had been taken completely off guard.

Stonewalling: "to refuse to cooperate, especially in supplying information."  It is employed by those who are indifferent.  When passion exists (a very positive or very negative emotion), stonewalling is impossible.  Only those who simply do not care any longer, can effectively employ stonewalling behavior and maintain that position over time.  The one who endures stonewalling is left with no answers.  Often the person is clueless about what the conflict is about.  It is the epitome of an unfair fighting strategy.  One is left to fill in the blanks, and the blanks are sometimes filled with the most extreme, even irrational conclusions.  When an opponent lacks personal confidence, the blanks are filled in with self-condemnation.  It takes a mature person to recognize the truth relayed in The Four Agreements, written by Don Miguel Ruis:   “Don’t Take Anything Personally.”  It’s generally not about you; it’s about the other’s personal journey.  Give yourself a pass.  The other may, or may not, ever be willing to reconcile.