Friday night fights: are the Three Scrooges--nagging, whining, and complaining--to blame for husband withdrawal?

• Author: Turndorf, Jamie
• Position: Life in America

IMAGINE you are in the throes of a heated argument with your mate when, suddenly, his eyes glaze over and he turns stone-deaf. Since he is not listening to what is bugging you, you turn up the volume, hoping to blast the wax from his ears, but it is no use. Instead of listening, he digs in his heels and defends his actions. Now you really are frosted, so you crank your emotional thermostat to the max and blast him with even more heat--and, big surprise, he is more deaf, more defensive, or just plain out of there in the flash of a firefly.

Millions of women throughout the world are all too familiar with the way men distance themselves whenever conflict erupts. The technical name for this pattern is the demand/withdraw negative escalation cycle--or husband withdrawal for short. According to statistics, husband withdrawal is the No. 1 cause of relationship and marital conflict, break-ups, divorce, and domestic violence.

Heated fighting triggers a biochemical imbalance in men's bodies that causes them to flee from conflict. Men flee because their bodies are hard-wired biologically to be hyperreactive to stress and danger, a programming that dates back to prehistoric times when men were hunters and needed to react with lightning speed: to flee or to fight dangerous prey. However, danger no longer is the ferocious tiger; it is the angry wife or girlfriend and, when she comes at him baring her teeth and berating him, his body sees danger and involuntarily switches into autonomic nervous system arousal, which triggers the flight-fight response. Not wanting to fight their partners physically, most men flee instead.

The most obvious form of fleeing is physical--in which a man avoids contact with his partner, stays away from home, or spends countless hours in his workshop. The second type is verbal, whereby a man justifies, makes excuses, and defends himself in order to escape responsibility. The third way men flee is to check out mentally. In this case, the man physically is present but mentally gone. He will appear deaf, dumb, and blind, as he practically drools on his tie and exhibits what I call a no-hablo-ingles expression.

Not knowing his involuntary "hightailing it" behaviors are caused by biological programming, a woman takes these behaviors personally, thinking: he does not care enough to stick around and resolve the issue. Her hurt morphs into anger but, when she blasts him with more heat, she unwittingly sets off stronger biological fire...