Taking a break during an argument: how to step away without walking out

“I can’t do this any more. I’m going out.”

The door closes, perhaps a little louder than intended. The one left in the kitchen stands with a tea towel in hand, feeling their heart pound. Sentences they didn’t get to say are spinning in their head. And somewhere beneath the anger something quieter and more frightening speaks up: Will he come back? Is this the end? Meanwhile the one who left is walking down the street, replaying in their mind how unfair everything they heard was.

Both have done something that looks the same — they have interrupted the argument. Yet one of them will come back an hour later calmer, while the other will come home even more dug in. The difference between those two outcomes is the difference between a break and an escape. In this post I will explain why a break during an argument is one of the most useful tools a couple has, what happens in the body during a fight, and how to step away without abandoning your partner.

What happens in the body when an argument boils over

John Gottman, the American psychologist who spent decades observing couples arguing in his laboratory, didn’t just film their faces. He also wired them up to equipment that measured heart rate, sweating and other bodily responses. He found that during a serious argument many people go through something he called emotional flooding. The body switches into alarm: the heart speeds up, adrenaline and cortisol are released into the blood, the muscles tense, breathing becomes shallow and fast.

As a rough threshold, Gottman pointed to a heart rate above about 100 beats per minute (somewhat lower in very fit people). Once someone goes past it, this is no longer ordinary anger or agitation. The body is reacting as if it were in danger — and in danger we don’t need listening, empathy and compromise, we need fight or flight.

In earlier research Robert Levenson and John Gottman showed something else that matters: couples whose physiological arousal was higher while they discussed a contentious topic were, on average, less satisfied with their relationship three years later. The body, then, is not just the backdrop to an argument. It is part of how the relationship develops.

I described the bodily background of this response in more detail in What happens in the brain during anxiety, and why the body reacts before you think. For an argument the key point is this: when you are flooded, your thinking narrows. You hear less than was said and understand less well than you otherwise would.

Why a good conversation isn’t possible then

The psychiatrist Daniel Siegel used the term window of tolerance for the zone in which a person can feel strong emotions and still stay in touch with themselves and with others. While we are inside it, we can be upset, sad, angry — and still listen. When we go beyond it, we tip either into hyperarousal (shouting, attacking, panic) or into hypoarousal (numbness, emptiness, “I don’t feel anything any more”).

Flooding is a state outside the window. In it you cannot hear your partner’s repair attempt, you cannot remember what they actually said, and you cannot choose your words. You often say things you otherwise wouldn’t — or you fall silent and stonewall.

That is why sometimes the wisest thing you can do in an argument is to interrupt it. Not because the topic doesn’t matter. But because it matters too much to discuss it in a state in which you can’t think clearly.

A break is not the same as stonewalling

Here it pays to be precise, because a break is easily confused with something that harms a relationship. Among the four most damaging patterns in conflict — the Four Horsemen in relationships — Gottman also included stonewalling: withdrawing from the conversation, falling silent, looking away, shutting down or leaving without saying anything. Interestingly, stonewalling is often a response to flooding itself. A person who stonewalls is usually not cold. They are flooded and defending themselves in the only way they know.

From the outside a break and stonewalling look alike — in both cases someone leaves the conversation. The difference lies in what it communicates. Stonewalling says: you and this topic no longer exist. A break says: I can’t manage right now, but I will come back, because you matter to me.

For the partner who stays behind, this difference is enormous. In people with a more anxious attachment pattern, withdrawal without words sets off an alarm that is often worse than the argument itself. Such a person will follow you, knock on the door, send messages — not because they want to pester you, but because your silence signals danger to them. I wrote about how this pattern gets tangled in The anxious and the avoidant partner: why these two find each other, and how to leave the loop. An announced break with a clear time to return is one of the simplest ways to interrupt that loop.

How to announce a break

A good break starts with a single sentence. Not with a slammed door and not with “leave me alone”, but with something that says three things: that you are flooded, that you will come back, and when.

Let’s look at what this can sound like. (The conversation is composite, not a real person.)

Tjaša: “Every time it’s about your mother, you take her side. Every single time!”
Rok: “That’s not true, and you know it.”
Tjaša: “Of course, I’m making it all up …”
Rok (taking a deep breath): “Wait. I can feel myself getting flooded, and I’m about to say something I don’t mean. I need half an hour. I’ll walk round the block and be back at eight, and then we’ll carry on.”
Tjaša: “You’re running away again.”
Rok: “I’m not running away. This conversation matters to me, so I don’t want to ruin it. I’ll be back at eight.”

Rok doesn’t leave in silence, doesn’t accuse Tjaša and doesn’t leave it open whether he will return. He says what is going on inside him and promises a specific time. Tjaša’s response, “you’re running away again”, is understandable — if he has walked out without a word in the past, it will take a while before she trusts the new way. That is exactly why it matters that Rok really does come back at eight.

It is a good idea to have the sentence for a break ready in advance. You won’t invent it in the middle of flooding. That is why some couples agree on a short code word or use a time-out card — a short note with the agreement in black and white.

Why at least twenty minutes

Once you decide on a break, don’t cut it down to two minutes. Gottman found in his work that after intense arousal the body needs at least twenty minutes to settle — longer for some people. Adrenaline doesn’t break down in an instant, and if you go back into the conversation too soon, you can easily be flooded again in a moment.

Gottman also describes a telling example from the laboratory. Researchers interrupted couples in the middle of a tense conversation, with the excuse that they needed to fix the equipment, and asked them not to talk about the topic for a while but to read magazines instead. When the partners resumed, they were physically calmer — and the conversation went noticeably better. Nothing else had happened except that the body had been given time.

The upper limit matters too. A break should not last for days. Some couples agree on a few hours at most, or on “later this evening”. If you can no longer talk calmly that day, agree on the next day — but agree on it explicitly, rather than letting the topic quietly disappear.

What to do during a break — and what not to

The most common mistake during a break is to spend it carrying on the argument in your head. You walk down the street repeating what they said, how unfair it was, what you should have replied. Gottman described two kinds of thoughts that keep a person flooded: thoughts of righteous indignation (“I’m not going to put up with this”) and thoughts of innocent victimhood (“why does this always happen to me”). Both are understandable. Both send the body back into alarm.

“Letting off steam” doesn’t help either, contrary to what is sometimes believed. The psychologist Brad Bushman showed in a well-known experiment that participants who vented their anger by hitting a punching bag while thinking about the person who had angered them afterwards behaved more aggressively, not less. Rumination feeds anger.

So what does help? Anything that calms the body and moves your attention away from the argument:

• Movement. A walk, a bike ride, a few minutes of brisk stair climbing. The body uses up some of the energy it prepared for a fight.
• Slow breathing. Especially an out-breath longer than the in-breath — the knowledge base describes the exercise breathing with a longer out-breath.
• Something that occupies your attention. Music, washing up, reading, simple tasks with your hands.
• One short thought once you have calmed down: “What did I really want to say? What do I need?” Not “how am I going to win”.

What not to do: send messages that continue the argument, ring a friend so she can agree that your partner is impossible, drink alcohol, or scroll through your phone looking for evidence. All of that keeps you in the argument, just without your partner.

A break is not wasted time. It is time in which you give yourself the chance to come back into the conversation as someone who can listen — rather than as someone who is defending themselves.

Coming back: how to carry on

A break is only as good as the return. If you come back and act as though nothing happened, your partner gets the message that the break was really stonewalling with a nicer name. So come back at the agreed time — even if you don’t feel like it.

A few things make the return easier:

• Start gently. For example: “Thank you for waiting. I’m calmer now.” The first sentence after a break often sets the tone for everything that follows.
• Own your part. If you said something harsh before the break, mention it. No long apology is needed; “what I said about your sister wasn’t fair” is enough.
• Talk about yourself, not about them. Instead of “you always take your mother’s side”, try saying what you need. How to do this is described in From blame to needs: how a couple learns a new language.
• Check that you are both ready. If your partner is still flooded, agree on a new time. It is fine to take a second break.

I gathered the rules that help in the conversation after you return — one topic at a time, no “always” and “never” — in How to argue with your partner: rules that actually work.

Exercise: your agreement about breaks

An agreement about breaks has to be made while you are both calm. In the middle of an argument any suggestion of a break will sound like running away. Take twenty minutes and put it together:

1. Each of you says how you notice that you are getting flooded. Hot cheeks, a clenched jaw, a pounding heart, the feeling that you can no longer hear the words. Once you know your signs, you catch them sooner.
2. Choose a sentence or a signal for a break. For example: “I’m getting flooded, I need a break.” Or an agreed word. What matters: whoever says it, the other respects it — even if they would still like to talk.
3. Agree on the length. At least twenty minutes, at most until the end of the day. Whoever asks for the break says when they will be back.
4. Each of you chooses what you will do during a break. Where you will go, what calms you, what you won’t do. Write it down.
5. Agree on who starts after the return — usually the one who asked for the break — and with what sentence. Then write the agreement down, for instance on a time-out card, and keep it where you will both find it.

The first few times it will feel awkward. One of you might ask for a break too late or come back too early. That is part of learning. What matters is that after each argument you ask each other: did the agreement help us, and what would we change?

When a break is not the right answer

I want to be honest here, because a break is not a solution for everything.

When a break has become an excuse. If one of you asks for a break whenever a topic gets difficult and you never come back to it, that is no longer a break but avoidance in a new disguise. A break only makes sense if the conversation continues.

When there is violence in the relationship. If you are afraid of your partner, if they threaten you, humiliate you or are physically violent, leaving is not a “break” with a promise to return. It is a retreat to safety — and nobody is owed a promise that you will go back into danger. Call the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence on 080 11 55 (in Slovenia), and in danger 113 or 112 (in Slovenia).

When almost every conversation floods you. If your body switches into alarm at every disagreement — not only with your partner but elsewhere too — a break won’t be enough. It may be anxiety, traumatic experiences or something else that deserves attention in its own right. Talk to your doctor or look for a psychotherapist. If you have panic attacks, have a doctor look at them first.

When one of you is always flooded and the other never is. Sometimes this is a sign that something older is repeating itself in the relationship — from the family of origin or from earlier relationships. In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we often see that a partner’s tone or word hits an old wound and triggers a reaction stronger than the present occasion. Then it makes sense to talk about it in a safer setting, for example in couples therapy — I describe how that works in How we argue safely in couples therapy.

Stepping away without walking out

A break is really a paradox: you step away in order to stay. You move away from your partner for a while so that you can come back to them. Couples who learn this often describe a sense of relief. Their arguments are no less frequent, but they less often end up somewhere it is hard to return from.

Gradually something else happens too. When your partner experiences that you really do come back, their fear of you leaving shrinks. When you experience that your partner gives you time, your urge to escape shrinks. So a break doesn’t only calm the body in a single argument — it slowly builds trust that the relationship can hold even the moments when you are both completely at the end of your strength.

What to remember

• Emotional flooding is a state of bodily alarm — according to Gottman, roughly above 100 heartbeats per minute — in which a good conversation is not possible.
• You announce a break in words and say that you will come back, and when; that is what separates it from stonewalling.
• The body needs at least twenty minutes to settle; a break should not last for days.
• During a break don’t ruminate on the argument — movement, breathing and simple tasks help more.
• A break only makes sense if the conversation continues; where there is violence, leaving is a retreat to safety, not a break.