In my first marriage, I used to go quiet during fights. Not because I had nothing to say. Because somewhere along the way I’d learned that saying it didn’t change anything. He controlled the money, the big decisions, most of the leverage. So I swallowed it and called it “keeping the peace.” I thought it was to keep the marriage intact and protect my sons from (what the 1980s so unlovingly called) a broken home. Boy, was I wrong.
For years I thought that was just my personality — conflict-avoidant, easygoing. Turns out it might have had a lot less to do with who I am and a lot more to do with the room I was standing in.
A 2021 study by María Alonso-Ferres and colleagues, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, followed 994 people across three studies of romantic couples. They found that people who felt less powerful in their relationship were more likely to bottle up their emotions and go passive during conflict — avoiding, shutting down, giving in.
But here’s the twist: that only happened when they also perceived their partner as unresponsive. When the less-powerful partner felt genuinely heard — that their partner showed care, validation, and understanding — the power imbalance stopped mattering. No suppression. No passive retreat. (Important side note: Partner responsiveness is one of the top 6 predictors of relationship quality. Don’t have it and your relationship will slowly erode.)
So powerlessness alone doesn’t silence people. Feeling unheard on top of powerless does.
This is exactly why Responsiveness is the R in the A.R.E. framework (Accessibility, Responsiveness, Engagement). It’s not a nice-to-have during conflict — it’s the thing that determines whether the less-powerful person in the room still gets to show up honestly.
If you’re the one with more power in a disagreement — more money, more social capital, more control over what happens next — your responsiveness isn’t optional. It’s the difference between your partner negotiating with you and your partner just giving up...and slowly, silently slipping away.
And if you’re the one who goes quiet, ask yourself honestly: is it because you don’t have anything to say, or because you’ve learned it won’t land or won’t matter?
Have you ever gone quiet in an argument — not because you didn’t care, but because you didn’t feel powerful enough for it to matter? What would have changed if your partner had leaned in instead? Tell me below.
Full study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550621996496
#partnerresponsiveness #power #researchmatters