Silent Treatment - Marriage & Relationships

If you’ve ever found yourself in a situation where you couldn’t get someone to talk to you, or even acknowledge you, you’ve experienced the silent treatment. Very high possibility that you may even have given it yourself at some point.

The silent treatment can happen in romantic relationships or any type of relationship, including between parents and children, friends, and co-workers. It's basically someone actually just cutting you off from their lives for an undisclosed amount of time or even worse, just go MIA. Asking someone that you need space is not exactly silent treatment. Problem is where someone gets angry, frustrated and use this as a regular ploy to punish you, disrespect you or not even giving you the time or thinking from your perspective. This can be used anywhere between 1 day to 2 weeks, etc ; depending upon person to person. 

Such instances leave you confused, irritated, frustrated and if it’s used regularly as a power play, it can make you feel rejected or excluded. This can have a huge effect on your self-esteem.

I have been very much part of this treatment in my last relationship. This is genuinely a very insane way to show your anger whereas, you can just sit across the table and resolve it like what mature people/couples do. But these individuals do not have that understanding of relationships. To them maybe it's a game to get validation and power surge from their supply. If you're like most people, you've probably heard the old adage, "silence is golden." But when it comes to marriage, is that really the case? 

Silence in a marriage or a Relationship: When silence, or, rather, the refusal to engage in a conversation, is used as a control tactic to exert power in a relationship, then it becomes "the silent treatment," which is toxic, unhealthy, and abusive. But, if being silent means simply taking a timeout to think things through and then address the issue again later, that is not at all the same thing. For Instance, You are upset that your husband forgot your special date and the planned dinner. You may start addressing the issue as to why he always does that and express your feelings of being hurt, upset leading to the question as to why he did what he did. A partner who genuinely is not willing to accept the responsibility of hurting you and explain you as to why it happened with an honest answer would respond, "I do not want to talk about it or simply saying, I am just too tired right now" or just completely ignores you and walks away. 

This refusal to talk is different from delaying the conversation for a convenient time for both parties.  This absence leaves the other partner mentally down and eventually, your relationship moves into toxicity.  Relationship will have stages where both partners will end up hurting each other every now and then. It's about using the path of empathy to understand as to why one actually ended up hurting the other. Always remember, "The one who loves you, will never hurt you ...intentionally". Just sit and talk. Anger and ego have no place in a relationship and punishing your partner with Silent Treatment is not going to help you in any way.  

To put in simple words, by not addressing the issues, you are simply saying that this issue, is "off-limits" and leaving your partner disappointed and in pain. You have decided not to resolve, compromise or even listen to your partner worries. Them asking to speak your mind is because they want a happy marriage and life with you. Hiding such things inside you will eventually start to fester and eat away the relationship. These will one day explode in your head like a ticking time bomb and will lead to the ultimate result; Divorce. You will never tell them and they will and cannot almost never find out as why you did what you did. 

People who use the silent treatment as a way to gain power or exert control in a relationship will:

• Use the silent treatment to put you in your place
• Give you the cold shoulder for days or weeks at a time
• Refuse to talk, make eye contact, answer calls, or respond to texts
• Fall back on the silent treatment when things don't  go their way
• Use it as a way to avoid taking responsibility for bad behaviour
• Punish you with the silent treatment when you upset them
• Require you to apologize or give in to demands just so they will talk to you
• Refuse to acknowledge you until you grovel and plead
• Use silence as a passive-aggressive way to control your behaviour (e.g., you give in to demands or you avoid certain behaviours to avoid the silent treatment)
• Silence you when you attempt to assert yourself by refusing to talk
• Communicate disdain or contempt in order to maintain the silence
• Resort to anger and hostility to shut you up
• Use it as the primary means of dealing with conflict

When the person using the silent treatment takes away the ability to communicate and collaborate with one another, the person on the receiving end often will go to great lengths to restore the verbal aspect of the relationship. This allows the silent person to feel vindicated, powerful, and in control, while the person on the receiving end feels confused and maybe even afraid of losing the relationship.

What's more, the silent person has successfully flipped the situation. The conversation is now about appeasing them and not about the issue at hand. The real issue is often lost in the struggle to regain equilibrium and communication in the relationship while the issues remain unresolved. And when this pattern of behaviour happens on a regular basis, this is both toxic and abusive.

It took me 9months and 7 therapy sessions to understand as what exactly I was dealing with. You are not at fault if you have ended up with someone who has this sort of behaviour when it comes to resolving conflicts. No marriage can be perfect and has no fights. Resolving them is the way and the only way to lead a happy and healthy marriage. And to resolve, you have to talk and listen. If listening and resolving is not your cup of tea, then please do not ruin someone's happiness and make them lose trust in the concept. All your good deeds , plans, thoughts, those nights of long never-ending conversations has been wrapped and thrown out of the window because you could not make it on your anniversary night .  You have the right to be angry but is this really that big of a deal that you will punish the other for days and weeks. Why you cannot celebrate it when you are together! Are dates above your relationship ?? . Instead of making the other guilty, if they are accepting, just be nice and say , It's alright. Unless the other is not at all apologetic , then its a different topic but if he/she is then its alright. You married the person on that DATE not the DATE on a person. 

It actually hurts a lot when such a small topic of anger turns out to be of far more weightage than the weight of your entire relationship. Your anger has not only gone on to shake the foundation of relationship but has literally made it come crashing down like 9/11 which took months or years of construction. It makes me anxious, nervous, feeling of that never-ending restlessness and look at the phone for a revert. All this effort was for nothing in the end because the other was not even considerate enough to listen to your reason. This will eventually finish one day and you will not feel a thing anymore.

 And later when you think over it, all it needed was to pick up that phone or sit across the table and talk, resolve and fall in love all over again.