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Why won’t my partner communicate with me? It’s a question I hear constantly, and it’s usually asked from a place of feeling shut out or unheard or like you’re carrying all the emotional load on your own. In this episode of this complex life, I want to unpack what’s often really going on when communication feels blocked.

I wanna look at things like emotional flooding, the patterns that shut conversations down, and how the way conversations get started. Can actually make things harder and how what we’ve learned about conflict growing up still shows up in our relationships. Now, I’ll even share some questions that you can ask that invite reflection instead of defensiveness, let’s get into the messy, complex side of communication in relationships.

When people say their partner doesn’t communicate with them. They’re often not talking about a lack of words. When I was preparing for this episode, I started looking at the kinds of things people ask. I looked at some of the [00:01:00] data that we have of the different reasons people reach out to the therapy hub, for couples counseling, and the biggest reason by far was communication.

We don’t communicate. We’re struggling to communicate. We want help with our communication. It came up over and over and over again.

And so what are people actually asking for here? Why are they, what do they mean when they’re asking for this? It’s often. There’s a certain need. They have a, a type of conversation that’s missing. Maybe they feel disconnected, they feel left out, they are worried. Their partner doesn’t understand them, they don’t feel understood, they don’t feel close.

They don’t feel like they know their partner or are known by them, or their partner is not listening to what they’re saying. They don’t feel that they’re really understood. Even apologies require a level of understanding in order to know what you’re apologising for. Some of our deepest wants is to feel seen and to have a level of intimacy that feels special.

And so when we don’t feel we are getting that. Communication [00:02:00] can seem like the center of that, that we’re not communicating. It often covers a wide range of things, like they just can’t see my point of view. I don’t feel understood. They’re not listening to me. They keep trying to justify things, fix things, take problems away, and none of that is what I want right now are the other side of that is.

Issues not being talked about, things being swept under the rug, conversations being avoided. Not even difficult conversations, maybe just they might feel awkward, or it’s a level of intimacy that feels way too vulnerable and so it gets avoided that can fit under this as well. What isn’t said and what isn’t talked about can, can hold a lot of weight in a relationship.

Most of the time this question is both a communication skill and an emotional availability. Both of these things need to happen together. We need to be emotionally available, and we need to have the communication skills to have these conversations, and they don’t have to be tough conversations. But for some people they do feel challenging, especially if they feel foreign or different or it’s not what you grew up with [00:03:00] or that level of intimacy feels really strange and these kinds of conversations feel too vulnerable.

And I’ve been planning and and scaffolding some of these conversations as I plan for my. Relationship New Year Reset, which I’m running live in January, and if you missed it live, that’s okay. It’ll be available on demand. I’m giving people some of the tools to have these conversations. Some of the questions to ask that cover a range of topics.

I mean, imagine how good you would feel in your relationship if you spoke honestly and openly about friends and family, your hopes and goals and dreams. Finances, sex and intimacy. The big changes or life transitions that are coming up. How you spend time together, what you want and what you need, and what feels good, and how you celebrate big occasions.

Imagine if you knew all of the answers to those things for your partner and you refresh them every year. That’s what I walk people through in my workshop. But a big part of what catches people off, or

I [00:04:00] guess lets the conversation go astray is emotional flooding and shut down and flooding is a physiological response. Our heart rate increases. You might feel your mouth get a little bit dry, you might feel tingling. It’s got that stress kind of feeling. And when we are flooded. Yeah, good conversation. It just, it doesn’t happen.

We’re not in a calm, rational part of our brain. We’re not regulated enough, and that’s when we might start getting super defensive. We might stonewall, we might attack back. We might start getting really nasty and say things that we regret and that’s, we know that that’s not our healthy adult self. That’s not the the calm, grounded person that we want to be.

And flooding is so important. It’s one of the things that I work through with my couples, we can spend a lot of time just trying to regulate the body’s response. Now, emotional flooding happens when someone is overwhelmed. The nervous system can go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn [00:05:00] response, and you might have an idea of which one you do, thinking clearly becomes hard, we might shut down, withdraw, or an escape can feel necessary.

And what looks like a refusal to communicate. Often comes from self-protection. And it doesn’t mean, I’m not saying that that’s a good strategy. I’m saying if you are the one who shuts down or your partner’s shutting down, it is scary for both people. It is overwhelming for the person who’s in shutdown and for the person who’s not in shutdown and they’re trying to communicate with their partner or have a conversation, and that that person in front of ’em is, is shutting down and withdrawing.

It can feel rude. It can feel inconsiderate. It can feel selfish. And it’s a response that they can’t help. And if that’s you, I strongly urge you to get some support so that you can stay in those conversations, that you can have those difficult or awkward conversations so you can have the relationship you want and deserve.

And now the Gottman’s Gottman’s Couple Therapy is one of the, the modalities that I practice, and they talk [00:06:00] about the patterns that predict relationship breakdown. And these show up in communication.

When we flood, we can get defensive and we can stonewall. If someone asks us something in a way that feels critical, defensiveness can come up. So we call these the four horsemen and we have contempt. Criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling and contempt in particular is one of the biggest predictors for divorce or separation.

And contempt can be very slight. Sometimes couples I see fight, they’re very maybe demure, very polite, and they don’t say awful things. But there’s a hint of contempt in their voice. And that defensiveness can also be very subtle. It can just be a symbol. Yeah. But I know, but you know that. But already disregards the other person’s stuff.

And so if you’re noticing those four horsemen creeping into your relationship, we need to look at their antidotes.

[00:07:00] Now, criticism can sound like an attack on the person’s character. It’s very different to say it hurt my feelings when you were late. And criticism is you’re never on time. And you can see that it starts to pick on the person’s character. Sometimes we hear criticism when the other person didn’t mean it, and there’s a difference between intention, impact, and interpretation.

Some people are very sensitive to feeling like they’re being criticised. So something as simple as saying, you said you’d be here at seven, it is now eight. The lasagna’s burned. Actually really hurt my feelings ’cause I put a lot of effort into that. They might hear that as criticism. And if that’s you, if you’re hearing that as criticism, go and get some help because you don’t need to feel that way.

And your partner should be able to bring to you things that bother them or times that you’ve let them down or disappointed them and you cop it. You, you take it. You accept that. Yeah. That, that, you’re right. I said I’d be home at seven and I’m here at eight. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it doesn’t mean you’re a shit partner.

But you can take [00:08:00] accountability and responsibility for that. Defensiveness is when we shift the focus away from understanding. Oh, but you’re always late. Oh, you never told me you were cooking lasagna. Oh, but there was traffic. Oh. But it wasn’t my fault. You know, we start getting defensive. Oh, but you never let me know.

Or last month when I cooked for you and we start deflecting and defending ourselves. Not a helpful strategy. It’s one of those four horsemen for that. That conversation not gonna work well.

Stonewalling that can often happen when someone’s flooded. They might physically be there, but it’s kind of like they’re not, they’ve kind of disengaged from the conversation or they might get up and walk away. I get it why you might need to do that, but we want to be able to regulate and reduce that flooding so that you can stay in the conversation because to be stonewalled is so hurtful and can leave your partner feeling so alone, so uncared for so unimportant.

And contempt the worst. One of the four horsemen, the most corrosive to a relationship shows up as eye rolling, [00:09:00] as sarcasm, as a tone, as a sense of superiority. Well, I’m never late. Yeah, it’s that that contempt in that tone saying, I’m better than you. I’m not late. I didn’t forget this. And it can communicate disgust and disrespect rather than frustration.

So these patterns, these four horsemen, criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt, escalate disconnection rather than rather than resolve issues, people start avoiding conversations to prevent conflict,

and these patterns are less likely to get you the kind of conversational outcome that you want.

These patterns are less about intent and more about protection and overwhelm, and one of the biggest triggers. For these patterns is how the conversation begins.

What you say when you start the conversation. One of the most common ways that couples get stuck is how they start this conversation. If you say you’re never on time, that’s very different. That’s going to [00:10:00] already evoke a sense of defensiveness in your partner. It’s leading with blame rather than personal experience.

If you were to give them the benefit of the doubt, assume that something bad happened, that their intention wasn’t to hurt you. Remember that’s a person that you love, that you like, that you’ve chosen. Give them the benefit of the doubt. When things are calm, then say, it really hurt my feelings. That you came home an hour after you said you would, and I had spent a lot of time making a really beautiful dinner, and I felt really let down.

That’s very, that’s going to give you a much more fruitful conversation and less likely to trigger defensiveness in your partner. So if you’re leading with blame and you’re saying, oh, you never, or you always, it’s going to likely escalate criticism. You want to start with an I feel statement and not, I feel like you don’t.

I feel disappointed. I felt hurt. I feel unappreciated. That’s going to change the course of that conversation. If you’re raising issues in moments of stress [00:11:00] and frustration, . You’re setting it up to fail, it’s going to be really hard to have a productive conversation. You funnel both of you or already stressed, already frustrated.

So think of a moment where you are, you’re trying to do laundry and you’re trying to feed the dog. Maybe you’ve got dinner in the oven, and that’s when your partner chooses to ask you about the next long weekend. And if you want to go camping. I’d, I’d flip my lid. I’d be, I’d be so stressed with all these things going and something in the oven and, and the dog wanting something, I’d be like, that’s just not the right time.

And I would probably snap and crack it. So the timing of when we have these conversations really matters. I, and wanting change without naming vulnerability, it’s hard. It’s really hard to get the change you want without actually showing the emotion behind it. So saying, I would like to spend more time with you.

I feel disconnected. It feels vulnerable. That is going to get you a step closer to maybe having that need met than if you said You’re always on your phone. You don’t organise things with me anymore. You don’t plan a date. When was the last time you planned a date night?

If you want [00:12:00] change, but you’re not willing to name the vulnerability, it’s probably not gonna land very well. , Even a reasonable point, can feel unsafe when it’s said as a criticism. Okay. You might be a hundred percent right that your partner was an hour late. That’s That’s fair.

It’s reasonable. It could be the truth. It is the truth. But if you say it as an attack, if you say it really critical, what are you hoping to achieve? It’s not gonna get you the outcome that you want. And if these are the patterns that have been happening slowly, slowly, in your relationship, well no wonder communicating is really hard.

And if it’s so hard now that you keep saying, we don’t communicate anymore, when was the last time you started a conversation? I’m sick of doing all this. It’s just perpetuating that cycle.

And sometimes communication breaks down because one or both people don’t have the capacity to sit with discomfort and. And being able to sit in discomfort is so important. If your partner is sharing something with you that makes you uncomfortable, maybe you feel too activated that you’re being blamed.

Learning to tolerate that and stay in the conversation is really important. If they are sad or [00:13:00] scared or stressed or overwhelmed, and your job in that moment is just to listen. Not to try and fix it. Not to try and problem solve it, not to try and tell them, don’t worry about everything will be okay, because you can’t handle seeing their distress.

Learning to tolerate discomfort and stay present is a crucial relationship skill and if you dunno how to start, if you dunno how to do it, get some help. Make an appointment with a therapist. Listen to some podcasts, read some self-help books, get on top of that because it will change your relationship when you can sit in that distress, in that discomfort and tolerate it so you can have more productive, honest, vulnerable, tricky, difficult conversations.

Your relationship will thrive. Capacity matters just as much as willingness. And I see so many people come to me and they, they’re willing to, but the capacity’s not there. And that’s a great first step to know that they want the skills to have these amazing relationships, and they’re willing to learn and stretch themselves.

[00:14:00] And it’s like fitness. It can take time. It can need to build it up. If you are unfit and you haven’t run for a little while, it’s going to hurt when you run, if you’ve never run before. Thinking about running a half marathon fills out of the question. Maybe you’re just running for one or two kilometers a couple of times a week, maybe.

The pace is really slow. So if your partner is still learning this and their pace is really slow, you can’t rush it, and you can sit with that discomfort, recognise that they’re trying their best, and then you get to decide, is that enough for you? Can you be supportive while they’re learning something new while they’re willing to try?

And the last thing I want to talk about is how conflicts were handled growing up. How you learn about conflict can shape how you handle conflict. Now, if you never saw your parents fight, then the idea of of a fight might mean the relationship’s over it might feel so unsafe that you wanna avoid it at all costs and conflict is not a bad thing.

Healthy relationships have conflict. They have differences. It’s un, it’s [00:15:00] unavoidable. It’s impossible not to expect to have differences. You’re different people, different bodies, different brains living in the world with two different sets of experiences. You’re bound to have a difference and you’re bound to have conflict, but how your family handled that shapes what your comfort is and how prepared you are to have those conversations.

if you’re curious about this, if you haven’t thought about it for yourself or for your partner, here are some questions I’d like you to ask each other. How was conflict handled in your household? Who had the final say? What happened when someone got angry? Was conflict avoided or was it explosive?

and What happened afterwards? Was there any repair attempt? I think some of those, if you ask your partner those questions and you reflect on them yourself, you might start to get a bit of an idea of what communication was like for them growing up.

And so if you are listening to this and you’re thinking, oh my goodness, I don’t even know where to start, it’s okay. I’ve got a few more questions that you can ask each other tonight. And if you think you need a little bit of extra support, I’d love for you to join me in my [00:16:00] live workshop of the Relationship New Year reset, so you can have your best 2026.

I want you to have your best year yet in this workshop, and it’s a, it’ll be available on demand. Afterwards, I’m going to step you through seven topics, seven conversations that will transform your life, that will transform your relationship. But if you’re not there yet, just something little to try.

Tonight,

I want to share with you some questions that I’ve pulled out of the workshop that I want you to expand on with your partner. So we’ve got the questions that I mentioned before about how conflict was handled, a couple more questions that you can ask your partner tonight.

What feels hardest for you when we disagree?

What happened in your household when someone got angry? What happened in your household when someone got sad? These questions invite understanding rather than demand change, and you could spend a whole evening talking about these.

One of the biggest lessons here is communication Struggles are really about someone being difficult. People often want connection. They don’t know how [00:17:00] to get it, and sometimes the way they do it pushes their partner further away. They don’t know what questions to ask or they feel like they’ve tried and they didn’t get the response that they wanted, or they wanna do better, but they get flooded.

There’s a lot that goes into this. It’s, it’s actually really tricky when you think about it. Patterns can change with awareness and support and learning a few new things along the way. If you feel frustrated or confused, maybe even relieved to have a different way of thinking, a different perspective.

I want to normalise that communication struggles are rarely about one person being difficult or unwilling. They’re usually about nervous systems. History, capacity , and patterns that can make some conversations feel unsafe. [00:18:00]