Oh, lordy. My ex-husband’s second wife did this to him all the time. In her mind, he hadn’t suffered/grovelled enough. So she would do the silent treatment, giving him just enough to keep him on the hook, while he bends over backwards (flowers, etc) to impress her again. She wants to be sure she has him securely on that hook. She will nurse her grudge until she feels he has been sufficiently punished for disagreeing with her in the first place.When he is thoroughly convinced he was wrong, and has gotten so anxious about losing her, she will sigh and let him back into her good graces.
This is not a healthy way to fight…is this their first major one? He should wake up now and just bail. She’s not tired, or drained…she’s just making him suffer. Unless he wants the rest of his life to be like this, tell him it’s time to do his own silent treatment and make himself scarce.
I think this is an important question. I backed off answering anything anyone else said because as I mentioned - I had a fight like this with my husband that I do believe signaled the beginning of the end for us. Is this the first time this has happened? I ask because to me it is the difference between the scenario put forth by both **kittenblue ** and **billfish ** that she wants him to grovel or wait until he’s “sorry enough” for her to give in or that she really and truly is just too tired to fight anymore and the argument has begun to outweigh the positives of the relationship.
I’ll admit I’m a little jumpy on this because of some of the other comments and want to scream “my relationship was important! you don’t understand what it was like!I had to take a break!” but I also recognize that it’s not the most productive way to communicate. I guess this is my roundabout way of saying don’t judge her too harshly. She may need to “go to the cave” because you don’t know what other stuff is going on in her relationship and this may be the only way she can deal with not saying things to him she can’t take back.
That was my take: she’s playing mind games and it’s a power struggle in her mind, and her method of maintaining power is to give him the silent treatment.
Actually, SHE gave him the space, after 8 years. She did one last snit-fit, and then he had a test: he had to come up with a date to impress her. Only problem was, he didn’t know it was a test, and he didn’t know the rules. He spent hundreds of dollars (which he didn’t really have) to rent a limo, buy roses, get a special table at the restaurant, champagne, new dress for her…nearly a thousand, if I recall. She enjoyed the whole evening, then dumped him at the end because she had wanted him to recreate their FIRST date (which, by the way, happened while he was still married to me and living with me and our children). She left him sobbing (yes, sobbing) in the limo. The limo driver tried to comfort him. He was humiliated and destroyed…but he still wanted her back. She left him for another man, divorced him immediately and left the state. He has sunk deeper into alcoholism and has not been the same since.
I hate poor communication in relationships. I wish people would just talk to each other. My daughter had a couple of dates with a guy and after the last one he had to go out of town for 2 weeks but promised that they’d talk on the phone while he was gone. They had a brief text msg. conversation in which he didn’t replay to her last msg. and now they haven’t spoken in 2 weeks. She’s not so much heart broken as she is pissed off at having been lead to believe that he was into her and wanted to continue seeing her.
I dated a guy (3 dates IIRC) and after the third date he called to say that he wasn’t really interested in me romantically and could we just be friends. While that stung a little I thanked him for his candor and to this day we’re still friendly. He’s the best friend of my best friend’s husband so we end up hanging out together frequently
Talk to each other people! It’s not that difficult.
kittenblue, that *is * sad. With the ex I talked about we had a mini-vacation that I had thought was about us getting back on track and reconnecting and at the end of it I found out that it had been a test as well. I yelled “You mean you had me on double-secret probation?!?!” and he answered yes, that he had been watching to see if I would still argue with him.
It really is the worst feeling to know that your love has been secretly judging you and keeping score of how well you stack up to his/her ideal. I remember the exact spot on the highway we were driving when I learned this fact.
That’s not poor communication, that’s her being a manipulative bitch. She clearly set him up for failure, as she never intended for him to succeed in the first place. I hope he got a valuable lesson from that, though it sounds like he hasn’t yet.
I can totally relate to this woman. Here’s how it might have worked for me:
I feel like I can’t make myself understood without it turning into an argument. I take equal responsibility for this - I do not blame him for being difficult, it’s just a problem with the way we communicate with each other. This is a major problem in general but very difficult to address head-on (and leads to circularity - when the problem I am experiencing is that I am frustrated because I can’t make myself understood, I try to express this problem, but he doesn’t understand, and I get frustrated … rinse and repeat as necessary.) So there is this pre-existing problem, which I suck up and deal with because I love everything else about him and can’t figure out how to fix this problem.
Then something else happens that I need to express, but can’t figure out how to do it without it turning into an argument (see pre-existing problem, above). This can be one of those it-would-be-minor-if-only-it-wasn’t-the-millionth-time annoyances, or it can be something I-can’t-live-like-this-for-another-moment serious, but either way I can’t bring it up without it turning into an argument.
So what can I do? I know that a discussion will accomplish nothing but frustrate me further and stress our relationship even more. So I say nothing, because there is really nothing I can say that wouldn’t make things worse. However, things can’t continue as they are. This does not make me a manipulative bitch, this makes me confused and frustrated and sad that my relationship is ending.
It seems to me that the woman in the OP is not being a manipulative bitch, she is confused and sad and frustrated. Her actions are cruel and insensitive (as, no doubt, were mine, when my relationship similarly crashed and burned), but who among us can honestly claim that they have never behaved in a cruel and insensitive manner when ending a relationship?
If in fact she is a manipulative mind-game-playing bitch, then he is a total maroon for putting up with it and having done so for two years. End of story.
I think she’s being passive-aggressive, too. If you are too worn out to fight anymore, and your mate is making conciliatory overtures, you can say something like, “I appreciate your concern, but I just can’t deal with this emotionally right now. Can I give you a call this Saturday and we’ll go for coffee?” It’s not ideal, but it doesn’t just leave him hanging. You do what she’s doing if you want your mate to dance like a monkey on a string, or you’ve already checked out of the relationship.
Yes, I can understand a situation where someone needs space for a little while. But you have to remember that when you’re in a relationship, it’s not YOUR space (as in just you) to carve a niche for yourself out of. It’s your space (as in yours and your partner’s), and you need to make sure that the other person who shares this relationship space with you is aware of what you’re doing with it and why. If you’re considering the relationship space as YOURS (as in yours alone) to do with what you want, then you’re not IN relationship space. You’re in single space, even if you THINK you’re in relationship space. And that’s what the other person is most likely feeling, too…that you’ve checked out of relationship space and left him alone in there.
It amazes me the number of people who jump right in with accusations when we’re only hearing a watered down version of a second hand story. Nobody knows for sure what happens in a relationship except those two people.
We have no idea what the situation is from this woman’s point of view. The brother is giving the story to his sister from his point of view, so double bias there.
Perhaps it is mostly her fault, I have no idea. To assume she’s cheating and suggest that he “DTMFA” is a little premature based on what we know.
Considering that they are both almost a half a century old, I think they BOTH are behaving a little childishly. IMHO she needs to learn to express what she’s feeling and he needs to learn what it is to give someone a little time and space.
True, but we’re also not paid professionals. Take advice from people on public message boards at your own peril, I always say. Well, sometimes say. If it comes up in conversation.
I took that to mean they spoke about her kids ('cause yeah, at 47, that’s a bit out there).
To me, this sounds like a classic case of ‘If you haven’t got anything nice to say…’ She didn’t want to say or write something she’d regret, so she said nothing. Until she had something genuinely nice to say.
Really, it’s impossible to say what’s going on. Does she want to get married but he doesn’t? Do he and her kids, adult or not, get along? I doubt teenagers have to deal with all that, on top of work.
It really sounds to me that she’s very hurt, and she assumes he should know what he did to hurt her. She won’t tell him. If he’s really her True Love Soul Mate™ then she shouldn’t have to tell him, she thinks.
This happens a lot, I suspect. She says to herself, “How can he not know that he hurt me? The only reason I would ever act like this is to purposely hurt him, therefore he must have hurt me on purpose. What a jerk. And now he’s pretending like he isn’t to blame. I’m going to stonewall him until he admits it was all his fault. If he can’t admit he was wrong about [insert X] then he must not love me.”
(If this is the case) What I would do is write this email:
It’s a nice way of saying “I suspect you’re waiting for an apology, but since you won’t tell me what you want, I’m not going to play a guessing game. You’re the communications expert, so start acting like it.”
Then, never write again unless she writes first. And if she wants to get back together, emphasize the communication aspects. Get a book on how to do it better (I can recommend some).
Naturally he should modify the letter as necessary. If he does know what he did wrong, or if he suspects, he should say so.