Chronic Silence After Conflict as Stonewalling Wrong Attractor: The Post-Rupture Withdrawal Architecture, Repair-Initiation Foreclosure Basin, and the Return to Calibrated Relational Reconnection

We present a formal analysis of chronic post-conflict silence as a wrong attractor state in interpersonal relationship dynamics. Drawing on the displacement framework—which models relational health as proximity to a ground state S^0 of calibrated reconnection—we define stonewalling as a stable basin W into which distressed dyads fall after unresolved ruptures, characterized by escalating displacement cost D() and a foreclosure mechanism that progressively inhibits repair-initiation.

We introduce the accumulated stonewalling functional = D()\,dt, show that grows super-linearly under continued avoidance, and characterize the conditions under which the foreclosure basin deepens to the point of topological irreversibility. We distinguish withdrawal depth phases—latent, consolidated, and locked—and derive phase-transition thresholds in terms of measurable relational parameters.

Intervention theory is developed from the geometry of the cost landscape: effective repair paths must traverse a saddle-point neighborhood rather than attempting direct minimization. We conclude with recovery dynamics, systemic effects on relational network topology, and the ethical structure that makes repair a duty rather than merely an option for parties who share a ground state history.