Anyone got a tried-and-true way to deal with the silent treatment?
I’m curious how people deal with it (preferably, in a mature and productive fashion) when they get the silent treatment in the following scenarios:
Serious replies welcome; light-hearted replies will not be excoriated by me either.
Thoughts?
From a significant other/life partner: totally unacceptable. I can see a “cooling off” period after a disagreement, where you each retreat to separate corners and do some thinking/offgassing/etc. But something where my spouse won’t make eye contact or even answer simple questions? That would be grounds for therapy in my opinion. Childish shit.
Everyone else? I don’t care, ignore them. If it’s a coworker and it’s impacting my own work and they won’t talk it through, I go to HR/boss/whatever and let them know what’s going on, and why I can’t finish <x> because this person won’t work with me.
A friend? Avoid them until they get over it, and make a note that the person is goofy.
I probably put up with more of this in my early 20s, but I’m not there anymore, and anyone older than about 25 really has no excuse for dealing with things with the silent treatment. It accomplishes nothing, other that to reflect badly on the person doing it.
I just try to enjoy it while it lasts.
We’re currently getting the silent treatment from my brother-in-law - we’re handling it by ignoring it and him. Well, we’re not ignoring him - we’d be open to reconciliation if he ever came around.
I admit that I do a version of the silent treatment - when I’m so pissed off I can’t talk to my husband or even look at him, I need to retreat into my cave and stew for a while, and he is not welcome there. I always come around in an hour or two. The best way for him to deal with that? Just leave me alone until I can talk about what’s bugging me.
Depends on whether you’re right or they’re right. If they’re right, and you did something to deserve it, just apologize and let them initiate talking to you again
If you’re right, then there’s nothing better than talking and reminding them of their faults and mistakes while they voluntarily refuse to mount a defense. Tell them what you think of their silent treatment and list all the ways they have failed you
+1
2-3-4) I usually don’t GAS and just let it go. If they aren’t going to talk about, it’s their problem.
That’s not the silent treatment, that’s just cooling down, and that’s very healthy.
Silent treatment can go on for days and last beyond the point you remember how it started.
I used to give in to what I consider emotional blackmail with my first wife. The “nothing” answers to “what’s wrong?” questions made me grind my teeth, both for the answer and for asking in the first place. Chewing on something? Spit it the fuck out or shut the fuck up about it for the rest of your life. My present spouse doesn’t play those games, thank Og. Oh, and I only apologize once for something that is my fault. If you angle for a second one, you’re going to hear exactly those words.
My wife doesn’t do it, but if she did I’d probably get petty and go along with it. “You don’t want to talk to me? Well fuck you too. I’m going to go play video games.”
…
I just calmly tell them that I know they are upset, and will be happy to talk about it when they are ready. For now, I will respect their wish not to discuss it; just please don’t misinterpret that to mean it’s not important to me.
And then I find something else to occupy myself with. And I NEVER ask twice. This effectively cures the tendency, because they quickly figure out that I’m perfectly happy to have some extra reading time.
This has generaly ended with them thinking I don’t care enough about them. (because to their way of thinking, if I did, I’d be begging and crying etc. . .) Mind you, I’m also not particularly likely to remain in the relationship. I have a very low tolerance level for drama.
From my husband or friend: usually I’m concerned, but try to give him/her space until either a) they come over and talk to me or b) it’s clear they’re not going to talk to me, so I have to be the one to start the conversation
From a co-worker: this has never happened, though when I can tell I’m being ignored, if I need something, I’ll e-mail it to them so I have documentation of having requested it. If they continue to ignore me, escalate.
Any other category of individuals: kids, the postman, whomever: for kids I usually just roll my eyes and try hard not to laugh. If I’m at a store and ignored, I leave - if asked why I’m leaving, I’ll explicitly tell the person asking the question. I can’t imagine being ignored by the postman - I’ve only seen the guy a couple of times.
“You know what you did” is NEVER an acceptable answer either.
I was soooo hoping there’d be zero responses to this OP.
I have started this discussion on many message boards including mine.
I have saw someone saying one time how you can ask, “You want dinner?” If they don’t respond, say, “Fine, don’t have anything. I will just make myself _________,” but only make food for one person and eat it all. Therefore, they will be forced to cook for themselves and realize how childish, stupid, and immature the silent treatment is (if carried on for longer than 15 minutes, a little off-time isn’t bad but if you are just going on for hours and hours, that’s really stupid).
But my advice to anyone: don’t use the silent treatment for more than 15 minutes. Else you look like a dick and you are not actually doing anything to resolve the conflict.
And going on for days is seriously stupid, that it may even deserve it’s own Pit thread (which I am not going to bother starting).
If someone does happen to go on for days, treat it like they aren’t even there. Go out wherever you want and enjoy the world for hours on end without actually telling your SO. At home, don’t do any chores or anything for them.
What Athena said (bolstering her reputation for wisdom!)
Silently thank them for doing me a favor?
If I were dating someone who pulled the silent treatment shit on me, they wouldn’t last long enough to become significant.
Co-workers: I barely talk to them unless I need them to do my job as it is. So I wouldn’t notice/wouldn’t care. If their behavior was holding up my work, I would make one request verbally on the order of “I need XYZ from you for the Blah project” (in other words, I would not acknowledge the silent treatment thing), one more request in writing/email, and if that didn’t work, I’d go to my boss / coworker’s boss (whoever was most appropriate) and say, simply, “I need XYZ from Coworker in order to finish Blah project. I’ve requested it from them several times but still don’t have it. What would you like me to do?” And I might suggest options like pushing the deadline or passing off the incomplete project, since those are the only things I can do on my own. At that point I’d expect the boss to find those unacceptable options and to take on having a discussion with Coworker themselves.
Friends or anyone else, I just don’t play that game, so after they made it clear that they were not-talking to me on purpose, I’d drop them and move on. If they ever change their mind, they know where to find me; but until then I’ve got other shit to do. If they let it drag on for a long time I’d be expecting an apology as a first point of order however, if they actually expect me to take time out to deal with them again. Generally I don’t expect it and I move forward with the expectation that the relationship is over and done.
Thankfully I’ve known very few people who thought that the silent treatment was an appropriate way to handle grievances.
I can’t relate the best way to handle it, because the one time it happened to me I didn’t deal with it very well, and it was a precursor to the end of my marriage, but I didn’t know that at the time.
My husband started giving me the silent treatment, and doing that wonderfully mature thing of talking to me through the kids: “tell your mother this that or the other”. I would speak to him directly, but he refused to speak to me at all, and of course wouldn’t tell me or them what I had done. It was very embarrassing when he continued this behavior even in front of my brother. But I wasn’t going to protect him. I flat out told my brother, with my husband sitting right there, “Bob hasn’t been speaking to me for the last week, but refuses to say why”. My brother hates any kind of embarrassing turmoil like that and was very uncomfortable. It was thoroughly embarrassing all the way around, and the kids were just not happy having to carry messages.
But after the first week or so, I rely began to enjoy the peace and quiet! No arguing, no snide comments…and I told him how pleasant I was finding the experience. Of course he flounced about, banging pots and slamming doors, and the kids began avoiding him.
By the third week I would just sit there and tell him anything that popped in my head about how I felt a mature marriage should work, or list all the things I used to like about him, or tell stories about funny things we had done together as a family when the kids were babies and we lived in Georgia. He wasn’t spending too much time hanging around, but when he was I would just talk and talk without having to worry about being interrupted.
Thirty days. This went on for thirty freaking days. By that last week I was fed up and utterly embarrassed by him and for him. I didn’t want him around anymore. Which of course was his intent, to make me kick him out so he could feel justified for spending time with his mistress and paint me as this petty vindictive woman. But I didn’t kick him out of bed or the house. Even when he shoved me off the bed with his feet. And finally After thirty days he decided I’d been punished enough and deigned to start talking to me again. And to tell me why I was getting the silent treatment.
Want to know what my huge transgression was?
I hadn’t thanked him for doing the dishes one night.
Except…I had said thank you. He just hadn’t heard me.
Needless to say, we were divorced a year later, after I found out about his affair.
THIRTY FUCKING DAYS?
Sorry, but it is a very rare instance that I use all caps these days, but only bold and italics doesn’t do it justice. That is just fucking stupid.
I thought more than 15 minutes was excessive. Here we have people going for a month.