When couples first come to therapy, they often want the other person to change. They can describe, in detail, how their partner shuts down, overreacts, and avoids responsibility, and list numerous flaws in their partner that, if fixed, would also repair their relationship. But real repair begins not when one partner is convinced they’re right—it begins when each person takes a hard, compassionate look inward (remember the two golden rules!).

That inward turn—accountability—is the second step in our PACER model, first introduced in our book Love. Crash. Rebuild. Accountability is not about guilt or surrender. It’s about integrity—the courage to acknowledge how our own defenses, reactions, and silences shape the relationship that we build, share, and maintain with another person.

In the middle of conflict, many partners don’t explode—they disappear. The arms fold, the eyes drift, the face goes still. The mind races even as the mouth closes. What looks like apathy is often physiological overload.

Relationship researcher John Gottman identified this pattern as stonewalling, one of what he famously called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Gottman & Silver, 1999). It’s a defensive reaction to emotional flooding—the body’s attempt to protect itself when the stress of conflict feels unbearable.

But........

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