In my experience of the way men tend to behave, when a man withdraws it is almost always (generalisation but true in most of my experience) not to elicit a particular response or get their own way in a form of passive aggression but instead is because of their own incapacity to handle their personal emotional turmoil. I have known plenty of guys (including relatives) who react just like this. They might throw themselves into work or a hobby, they may take up a new pasttime almost at random and devote every waking hour to it, they may go with barely an hours sleep for days on end.

This isn't done out of selfishness nor as a way of getting their own way but instead because they don't know how to handle, deal with, control, contain or even live with profound emotional states so they will avoid thinking about the actual problem and instead try and fill their every moment with something else until the situation changes or their unconcious minds have processed their feelings for them.

Any emotion can cause this, as long as it is strong, unfamiliar or difficult for the man. I've seen it happen with Love where the person fairly fled the woman he was interested in and spent all his time on a hobby. I've seen it happen with Fear, of aging, of failure, of mortality. I've seen it happen with grief, profound or even seemingly insignificant.

This isn't childishness but a profound and ingrained reflex heavily conditioned into boys from an early age. This is exactly how many boys are taught to deal with emotions in life.

I think that this is a perfect example of what is wrong with current masculine culture, with societies expectations of men. Boys, especially in rural areas, are taught to disregard their emotions, to reject them alongside anything remotely considered feminine as weakness and a flaw. They are taught not to cry, not to show fear, not to show emotion, not to show sympathy, not to show too much interest in women unless it is sexual. They are taught to be thoroughly emotionally disfunctional.

I have seen women as well as men take part in this conditioning, mothers teacthing these lessons to children as much as their fathers or peers. I think it comes from artificial false and/or edxaggerated ideas of what males should be like. I have also seen that this can lead to violence (and I am not excusing that violence in any way) as I have observed that many men when unable to handle their feelings if forced to face an issue that they are trying to avoid even if it is tangentially related to their emotion will react with intense anger. It can be easier for some men to lash out physically at people trying to help them than to face their feelings.

Thankfully I have seen some improvement with these things over my lifetime, with the broader victories of feminism and the breakdown of traditional male roles, with reductions in entrenched cultural homophobia that had many men acting as extreme parodies of supposed 'proper' male behaviour to avoid the stigma of seeming gay, with the rise of acceptance of small displays of emotions.

There is still a massive amount of work needed before we can finally destroy the repressive ideas of a limited acceptable masculinity that have chained, twisted and stunted men for generations fueling self-hatred, fear and hatred of the different and inspiring many forms of violence. How many women, gays, transgenders and others have been bullied, assaulted or murdered because of their transgressions of these rules of acceptable masculinity? Because their actions against these remind the repressed of their own trapped inner conflicts?

How much suffering exists in the world because men are not able/allowed/encouraged to come to terms with their own inner nature whether emotional, sexual or gender expression?

Now I'm not sure if that is what is happening in this case, but I have seen this kind of behaviour hundreds of times. Certainly I think the CD in this scenario needs to explore and come to terms with whatever emotions are seething beneath the surface, causing the withdrawel. Communication is key, but there must also be a non-judgemental acceptance/acknowledgement of feelings-even ones that are selfish. The cause of the feelings could be seemingly small, but unless it can be admitted and faced it can't be dealt with.