How To Handle The Silent Treament?

[Anonymous]

I'm dealing with what may be the silent treatment with a man I'm in a serious relationship with. We've been together a year and we're in our 40s.

It happened after an misunderstanding that got a bit heated at the end. It was nothing horrible, just a few frustrated sentences said in somewhat raised voices to each other, then we stopped. I understand that there could be a legitimate cool down period. I needed a bit of time myself. We may in fact have different lengths for what that period is. However, as it goes on, I suspect a silent treatment and/or power struggle where he is either punishing me, or wants me to contact him first, or both. I'm beginning to think he is the type to do that kind of thing.

How do you DCUMers handle such a thing? Any advice/insight appreciated. TIA.

[Anonymous]

Depends - you wanna be miserable permanently or temporatily?
At 40 the odds of you finding a lifelong partner a dwindling by the day so if you wanna stick to your guns and refuse to speak first to resolve your issues then odds are you're gonna end up miserable. If you have the gumption to be miserable for a moment to swallow your foolish pride and speak first you may be able to reconcile this relationship and relay to him that you don't like the silent treatment and he may adjust his actions accordingly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm dealing with what may be the silent treatment with a man I'm in a serious relationship with. We've been together a year and we're in our 40s.

It happened after an misunderstanding that got a bit heated at the end. It was nothing horrible, just a few frustrated sentences said in somewhat raised voices to each other, then we stopped. I understand that there could be a legitimate cool down period. I needed a bit of time myself. We may in fact have different lengths for what that period is. However, as it goes on, I suspect a silent treatment and/or power struggle where he is either punishing me, or wants me to contact him first, or both. I'm beginning to think he is the type to do that kind of thing.

How do you DCUMers handle such a thing? Any advice/insight appreciated. TIA.

I was dating a guy who did this exactly one time. Had disagreement about something and then he called himself giving me the silent treatment. Every time I got home and he wasn't talking to me I left and went out. He wanted to ask where I was going or what I had been doing when I got back but he couldn't cause he was punishing me with the silent treatment. After a couple of days he got so frustrated he just screamed "WHERE ARE YOU GOING". My response was "FU, remember your not talking to me so you don't get to know where I am or been or headed to" and I walked out. When I got home guess who was just a chatty cathy and apologized for being an ass. Never did it again. I dumped is ass not to long after that.

[Anonymous]

On a related subject, how can I get my DW to give me the silent treatment? Especially during baseball games and a certain HBO series featuring dragons, dwarves and direwolves (oh my!)?

[Anonymous]

Grown ups don't do the silent treatment. A few minutes to calm down and move on is one thing, hours or days is childish and ridiculous. Or it's abusive.

Dump and run.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, but it sounds like you're the one playing games -not him. You're actually thinking about who contacts whom first? I'm in my 40s and after fighting with my partner, and we have a "cool down period" or we don't talk for a few days or whatever, it doesn't even occur to me that I'm contacting him or he's contacting me first. If I'm done cooling off, I'll reach out to him - even if it's something like "Hey, you want to grab dinner tonight after work?" or something like that. If he continues to give me silence, THEN I know he's giving me the silent treatment instead of just needing time to cool down.

If you haven't even reached out to him, you have no idea if its a silent treatment or he's just cooling off. You doing this "should I call him first or wait until he calls me first" is childish and really proves nothing. (seriously - what does it prove if he dials your # first? that he loves you more? that he has more flexible fingers? that he's less busy? Not really sure what "calling first" actually shows you.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grown ups don't do the silent treatment. A few minutes to calm down and move on is one thing, hours or days is childish and ridiculous. Or it's abusive.

Dump and run.

I respectfully disagree. I've gotten into some pretty heated arguments with my partner and it's taken me days to cool off. Same with him on different occasions. Sometimes people need time to stop being defensive (or offensive), start calming down and being objective about their behavior or position. We both know that sometimes we just need to not hear from the other person for a few days before we can either agree to disagree or regroup and discuss again.

[Anonymous]

OP, which one of you accelerated the disagreement? I can tell you that silent treatment or not, this guy is bothered by the entire situation and wants things back to normal. But doesn't know how to make it happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grown ups don't do the silent treatment. A few minutes to calm down and move on is one thing, hours or days is childish and ridiculous. Or it's abusive.

Dump and run.

Sorry but +1. Smells like trouble.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but it sounds like you're the one playing games -not him. You're actually thinking about who contacts whom first? I'm in my 40s and after fighting with my partner, and we have a "cool down period" or we don't talk for a few days or whatever, it doesn't even occur to me that I'm contacting him or he's contacting me first. If I'm done cooling off, I'll reach out to him - even if it's something like "Hey, you want to grab dinner tonight after work?" or something like that. If he continues to give me silence, THEN I know he's giving me the silent treatment instead of just needing time to cool down.

If you haven't even reached out to him, you have no idea if its a silent treatment or he's just cooling off. You doing this "should I call him first or wait until he calls me first" is childish and really proves nothing. (seriously - what does it prove if he dials your # first? that he loves you more? that he has more flexible fingers? that he's less busy? Not really sure what "calling first" actually shows you.)

+1 Calling first shows maturity - OP doesn't have that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grown ups don't do the silent treatment. A few minutes to calm down and move on is one thing, hours or days is childish and ridiculous. Or it's abusive.

Dump and run.

I respectfully disagree. I've gotten into some pretty heated arguments with my partner and it's taken me days to cool off. Same with him on different occasions. Sometimes people need time to stop being defensive (or offensive), start calming down and being objective about their behavior or position. We both know that sometimes we just need to not hear from the other person for a few days before we can either agree to disagree or regroup and discuss again.

The cooling off period should not take days of silence. And if you need to avoid a certain subject while you mull it over, that's fine. But you should also be able to discuss other things with your spouse when you are in a disagreement (aka: how was work? Do I need to get Janie from practice today? etc). If you can't do that, I'd suggest some couples therapy to work that out.

[Anonymous]

If you haven't contacted him aren't you also giving him the silent treatment? Why does he get the blame if neither of you are talking? Ask yourself if it's more important to make it right or more important for you to be right.

[Anonymous]

OP, how long has it been?

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for all of the input. I'm usually the type to just contact the other person first as soon as I'm calm enough. I'm not very prideful that way. I guess it's because I've seen a bit of this behavior from him before, and now I'm wondering if I should handle it a different way to help create a boundary that this wont be acceptable in the relationship. In a past relationship, I was always the one to instigate the "work things out" conversation, and this was not a good dynamic for the relationship.

I guess that could be considered playing a game on my part, or it could be argued that I'm refusing to play his game. I don't really know. He may like the game: where he is hurt by the disagreement, he punishes me by no contact, then I contact him first (and to him it may mean something who does it first), and then I instigate the discussion where we work things out.

The disagreement was the night before last, so it's been 1.5 days and 2 nights. We don't live together. I'm still considering it may take some people that long to cool down. It wasn't huge in my eyes, and I don't think a lot of people would think it was huge (no extreme/extended yelling etc.), but everyone is different there too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grown ups don't do the silent treatment. A few minutes to calm down and move on is one thing, hours or days is childish and ridiculous. Or it's abusive.

Dump and run.

I respectfully disagree. I've gotten into some pretty heated arguments with my partner and it's taken me days to cool off. Same with him on different occasions. Sometimes people need time to stop being defensive (or offensive), start calming down and being objective about their behavior or position. We both know that sometimes we just need to not hear from the other person for a few days before we can either agree to disagree or regroup and discuss again.

The cooling off period should not take days of silence. And if you need to avoid a certain subject while you mull it over, that's fine. But you should also be able to discuss other things with your spouse when you are in a disagreement (aka: how was work? Do I need to get Janie from practice today? etc). If you can't do that, I'd suggest some couples therapy to work that out.

I see the confusion. You thought I was married. I'm not. we don't live together. We don't see each other every day. it's not unusual to spend a couple days not talking - especially if our last encounter included a fight.