The silent treatment is not only silent, but can be deadly. Deadly, that is, to relationships. Deadly, more specifically, to the trust, love, safety, communication and intimacy that preserve and nourish relationships.
The silent treatment (also known as stonewalling) entails a partner’s (the silencer) passive-aggressively refusing to communicate with the other (the silenced). Unlike avoidance (a conflict-aversion defense), the silencer deploys the silent treatment with toxic purposes in mind.
The silencer’s aim is, above all, to silence communication. More specifically, it is to render the other invisible and, in so doing, induce in the “other” feelings of powerlessness and shame. (Note that the experience of powerlessness often evokes shame.)
The silent treatment is a statement of contempt, relating, “You aren’t worth the energy it would take me to acknowledge your existence, let alone your feelings or needs.”
The silent treatment tactically communicates, You have done something wrong, seriously wrong—wrong enough to warrant my repudiation of your existence.
Its message is menacing and extortive—menacing in its implicit accusation of guilt, and extortive in the lose-lose proposition it makes: either you confess to a “crime” (against the silencer) you may be unaware of having committed (a degrading concession), or, if you don’t, the silencer continues to blot you out.
The silent treatment is a technique of torture. This may sound hyperbolic, but human beings need (on the most basic level) recognition of their existence. The withholding of this recognition, especially if protracted, can have soul-warping consequences on personality. (Just consult attachment theory for proof of this.)
It is deeply disturbing to be silenced (stonewalled), especially by someone you love, or someone you believe (or want to believe) loves you. The silent treatment aims, therefore, to exploit a very deep, elemental vulnerability.
Understandably it is the kind of vulnerability from which one desperately wants relief. And the controlling, abusive silencer holds the cards—he can provide relief by deciding if, and when, to reinstate his recognition of your existence.
However, like many abusers, he may require something of you first–namely, your capitulation. From the silencer’s perspective, “capitulation” may involve his metaphorically bringing you to your knees, meaning he may demand that you appeal to, plead for and/or beg his forgiveness as a condition of his readmitting you into his good graces.
As noted, you may feel coerced into admitting something you didn’t do, say or mean. This, after all, is how false confessions occur: the accused feels so exhausted, disempowered and helpless to be heard against the monolithic accuser that, simply to escape the hell of being disbelieved, she relents (and confesses).
Or else she may begin to wonder, under the prolonged, accusatory assault, whether she’s crazy; whether maybe she is, in fact, guilty of a crime that not too long ago she was mystified and/or outraged to be accused of.
As I suggested in The Pathological Self-Confidence of the Sociopath, it’s not so hard to jar the confidence of, and foment doubt in, others. While we invest some degree of trust in our perceptions, that trust can be surprisingly fragile. Because we tend to be built with more uncertainty than certainty, we are prone, especially facing another’s prolonged, implacable invalidation, to feel self-doubt rising like flood-waters.
The abusive individual, whether narcissistic or sociopathic, exploits this natural psychological frailty. For this reason (and others) he will prize the silent treatment for its capacity to sow insecurity, dread, even terror, in its intended target.
(My use of “he” throughout this, and other, posts is a convenience and not to suggest that women are incapable of the behaviors discussed. This article is copyrighted (c) 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Good Grief,
You said: “and I do feel bad that I pressured her into moving here so quickly”….lemme repeat that: PRESSURED. Then you said something about you felt she wouldn’t want to deal with all your questions because she knows how you do that…..in several of your posts you have said things that make me think you are very controlling. You also mention in virtually all of your posts how good you were to her and you can’t believe how she has done this after ALL YOU DID FOR HER and this comes across like you think she OWES you.
Your ex very well may be a sociopath. OR she could be using the tactic of avoidance in breaking up with you because she didn’t want to DEAL with the drama of facing it head on. As in she may have known you wouldn’t take NO for an answer regardless of what she said or did. And you AREN’T, are you?
I understand you are in pain over losing her and you repeatedly say how great she was etc. up until near the end. Yes, she has used bullshit excuses (the car, the phone, her Mom’s disappearing act etc.), but really man, LET IT GO, LET HER GO. You cannot FORCE this girl to communicate with you. If she is a sociopath she does NOT CARE. If she is not a sociopath, she still does not want to have you in her life. Period. Yes, it hurts. But that is the reality. She does not OWE you any further explanation. Her silence is speaking VOLUMES. Sure the mature thing would have been to have discussed it with you and been communicative about her feelings. But sometimes when a person knows things are gonna be difficult and it is gonna be hard to avoid a scene or a thousand questions, they just don’t always act in a mature fashion, sociopath or not. This is a situation (her feelings or lack thereof) that you CANNOT control or force. Give it up man.
Good Grief,
I also wanted to add that I think it is good that you are posting and venting here instead of actually sending her those letters and emails. And also to say that if your ex is a sociopath the absolute BEST and KINDEST thing she can ever do for you is to NEVER respond to you. That is the best you can ever hope to get out of her is silence and to leave you alone.
Good Grief:
She doesn’t want to know about you anymore. Anything further you do will make her like you less and less. You are addicted. Like a drug. You need to get a new addiction or see someone to help you overcome your codependency. I know because I was the same.
An early morning before court dose of LF to make it through my day.
Learned, Verizon network. And yes the image will help. Who says I need a lawyer. I got Matt right there with me! LOL! In spirit anyway, Hey Matt want to take road trip:). You could make a career outta helping us all here! Seriously appreciate the support. And by all means ask out those men for coffee and let me know how that goes:)! Remember it is not us that were the problem it was them. We just made the mistake of loving who we wished they were instead of who they turned out to be and then staying in denial and the illusion too long. A local band that I love and have become friends with called the Fifth from Fayetteville you can find them on reverbnation.com have a line in a song that goes “we don’t know what to say when it’s over so we just turn and walk away.” That is GG how some people deal. Sociopath or not, some people usually men just don’t want to deal with aftermath of any kind. Better to just walk away. Sucks for the one left without the answers but really now that I have mine, it still makes no sense and though it kills it for me as far as my feelings, I’m left knowing I lived a lie for almost 10 years with someone who never felt anything. Makes me feel like a very stupid fool for everything I ever did for him, for every sweet nothing I ever said, and especially for every hurt angry tear that I ever cried. And now to end up in court to air the dirty laundry in public in a very tiny town is the ultimate humiliation. Because as he has said, he doesn’t care what anyone thinks, says, or feels. None of this is affecting him at all. If he wins, he punishes me. If he doesn’t, oh well it is not like he is really scared and needs protection to feel safe from me. All just a game. And his new lady can stand by his side and feel all big to know this is a guy who will make sure we stay safe from Psycho Joy. What a strong smart honorable man I have found for myself. Until the day comes she is on the end of his lies and wrath. And that day will come. It always does. Sometimes sooner. Sometimes later. But it always comes.
I just lost a long post I wrote…
In a nutshell Jen, I wouldn’t consider it to much pressure I applied. I changed my plan to move back east to stay out west to be with her. but she knew I needed to move here for work. she knew that to be with me that she’d have to move here for awhile. we even looked at places out here while we were visiting one time. She knew the deal from day one. but I didnt have a house here cuz its hard to find rentals so I was gonna stay with my folks until I could find a house and she was gonna stay with hers. Then a month before we were to leave out west this house popped up and it was a great deal so I took it and I guess I just assumed she wanted to come. but she had already told her family and friends she was gong home and she still wanted to do that. So we agreed she’d go there for a few months and then come here. that was the deal.
I would ask her from time to time while we were stil out west when she thought she’d come and her answer would change. first it was 6 months, then 3, and then 2. she was the one who said when I get there we’ll start a family.
She was the one who mentioned in her email she was ready to go. She was the one who said in our 2nd to last phone call before that email that she was half way here. I even told her that I wasn’t taking it personally that she was only calling a few times a week. I said I understood that the more she talked to me that the less she was hanging with her family so it was better to not hear from her as much because that meant she was busy with them and the sooner she’d be here. she said “exactly.” I put no pressure on her to move here once we split, I wanted her to come when she was ready. But I would ask her a lot if we could visit which I don’t think was too out of line cuz I hadn’t seen her in a month or so. she would get standoffish about that and there was always an excuse as to why we couldn’t visit.
yeah, I am curious and she knows that. maybe your right and she didn’t want to incur any drama by telling me it was over. she would be right that I wouldnt take it well after all of the promises of marriage and kids and her moving here. I would have been caught very off guard about that and I probably would have over-reacted as many people probably would. That part is absoluely correct. I just wonder if it was me, moving here, or if it was her? If it was me then I apologize to her. you are right though, I wouldnt have taken it well, she probably knew that and I would have asked her why…of course I would have. I thought we were a done deal, she said it all of the time, on the day I left her she said I was no longer her future husband but her husband, so yeah, if she broke up with me 3 weeks later then I would have been pretty blown away and upset. She ended up calling me for 4 weeks after I left her and then emailing for about a month after that. 4 emails in that time.
The absolute hardest part to hear, the hardest part to accept, is that she doesnt even want to know me anymore. at the very least I was a great friend to her and it’s not fair in my opinion for her to not wonder about me or like you all say, not even want to know me anymore. I hate that part of it. I considered her my best friend and we were real tight I thought, I never wronged her in any way…so why wouldn’t she even want to know me anymore? why would she not ever wonder how I’m doing, what I think, if I miss her and why would she never ever think of me or miss me? I know there are no answers to that, but that part doesn’t make sense to me
good luck joy
This is completely off topic, but today I was reading the LF back catalogue and I thought this thread was really great – for me:)http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2008/02/15/the-fantasy-of-magic-moments-with-sociopaths/ I started off here just reacting to what I was feeling or wanting feed back, but its really good to read back and do research, get insight.:)
QUOTE FROM SABRINA – ” I was in some sort of weird competion with him on everything. Felt like I constantly had to defend myself. An undercurrent of uneasy, uncomfortable, and something aint rite””
Totally how I felt Sabrina! For mcuh of our last year together it was increasingly feeling like a competition and I was getting more uncomfortable about criticising him for anything at all because he would get all sulky & pissy and accuse me of calling him a bad boyfriend!
The undercurrent was like you describe – he developed an increasingly cold almost sinister demeanour – and also a feeling that we were going nowhere, that he wasn’t really ‘there’ with me, I didn’t feel close to him, it’s like that healthy increasing connection came to a dead stop around 6 months in. I didn’t feel any closer to him after 2 years than I did at 6 months.
Glad I’m outta there but terrified of what I might end up with next which is why I’m staying single until I am healed as much as possible. xx
Good Grief,
I would just like to say that from your initial posts and “layout” of her and sharing different scenarios “along the way” in the relationship…that there were some REAL RED FLAGS about her personality (and yes of course we all have our own personal red flags too)..but there are way too many incidents that are questionable. And as what always happens with these off balanced situations is we begin to have a heightened awareness suspicion and they categorically begin to get loud or accusatory or offer make up sex or just generally try to skim over the REAL SITUATION. But end result makes us look like we are controlling or demanding or insecure…Its classic. Classic.. Classic…
I would agree with Jen….IF throughout this you were writing HER and calling HER and following HER all throughout the “Breakup”… but you were waiting 5 days to reply…you werent calling (unless Goodgrief…up until the phone in car scenario you actually were calling endlessly?? and she did that move to stop you from being able too??) but really so far I see you as trying to respect and accept SO MUCH SHE DID, so as to not rock the boat or fear losing her…so you cattailed along….waiting…trying to get back to some semblance of normalcy (lets IM, call me from someone elses phone, lets visit) etc…. and lets say she felt pressured…she could have said (knowing how you are with her and how you have historically backed off if she acted up….she would have said baby…Im feeling pressured and just need chilltime….and she knows you would have been like ok baby I understand….so I dont buy into the “pressuring her” I think she just was weighing her options…maybe beginning another relationship…choosing between where she was and gearing up to go with you (in case things turned out she was bored there, etc…)…I think the BOTTOM LINE is she opted out. Whether she is an S or whether you wanna believe its something you did or whether you wanna believe she is just selfish and messed up in terms of commitments and pathological lying… WHATEVER HER DEAL…she opted out.
And the absolute SMARTEST thing you could do is….let it ride….let it play out….let time pass by. Esp. if you were received as pressuring or controlling…just look at you now, look at the facts….you have not made any contact or stalking or begging….SO if it were that she thought you were controlling…enough time will pass by and she will either miss you or not…and get in touch with you or not. You can convince, persuade, change her mind….time and realness and moving on will work things out.
I feel STRONG that often alot of us are left with feeling were we too this or too that….too controlling..too many questions..too much pressure…when in fact if we were with a healthy person we wouldnt be put in vulnerable situations. But their nature to lie, and manipulate and BE IN CONTROL, often takes a toll on us and we are no longer their good little sheep yessing them and going along with them (like the way she strung you along with sporadic emails filled with mixed mesages, always love you miss you…because thats what you hold onto…and as long as you are going along with it…shes cool and free to do whatever she was…and keep you hanging. But if you call her out…then she can no longer keep up the stringing along…and she goes away. Basically you spoil her manipulation of you — so she cant make a move – cuz shes not REAL or GENUINE…Shes BS…
She wouldnt want to know you anymore – cuz she cant string u along when you no longer kiss her bad ass…and let her get away with her bogus crap. See its all good if you are in that place of not wanting to question her or willing to let it all slide…she gets away with whatever she can…but when you actually hae a gut feeling of being taken advantage of or mistreated or being lied to…its a natural human response to speak up protect yourself…with these people they either twist it around or just bail because their jig is up…and we are left thinking its our fault, if only we didnt saysomething…they would still be here…YES…but they would be here only on their terms…calling the shots…manipulating us…doing their own thing…no effort for anniversay recognition, no more realness, just stringing you along for when they want their next hit or dose of your wallet or good time…
Shes able to say how are you? hows work. I miss you…when in communication because A..she might on some level and B. she knows it keeps you in the mix…they know the words you hold onto to keep you hooked and then they add in their own words (mom gone no phone.. miss your voice….car shop for a year.. miss you…no time for anniversary gift…network down…love you… so it says Im not gonna be in touch much (but you over look that ) and it says love ya miss ya see ya soon (and you hold on to that) and in the end none of it matters cuz HER ACTIONS SAY IT ALL. I swear we could have relationships with others with no words at all…make it a heck of alot easier….ACTIONS SAY IT ALL…. skip the words… people want to do what they want to do and they will do it! So if you take all the words out of the past year and you look at all your efforts and actions and attempts to be together and keep it going and doing and giving…what were her Actions???
Sorry for rambling, but I break it down for you because I had to do it with my X. Good grief I was as confused and messed up and spinning round and round and SHOCKED and DISBELIEF and OBSESSING HOW COULD HE,,,AFTER ALL I WAS AND DID….AFTER ALL HE SAID….bottom line HE WAS A BAD PERSON FOR ME IN MY LIFE…HE NEVER DID ANYTHING WITH MY BEST INTEREST IN MINE..HIS ACTIONS WERE THIS..
Ill take whatever you wannna give…it sure feels good to have someone who cares and gives and gives without me having to do much in return…and even if I piss on her…she still says its ok, or she comes back to me…she cares so much about me she would do anything for me…yeah..this is one wave Im gonna ride out….but if she ever turns on me and questions who Im with, or where the money goes, or what Im up to or questions my stories and whereabouts….SHES DONE…I DONT NEED THAT CRAP…ITS MY LIFE! He was never about me, my well being, or US…Well it was “us” when he wanted something…but again just words. They want insecure, needy, low self esteem partners. Because they dont know how to have a healthy balanced commited relationship. And we tend to fall apart when our partner lies, cheats and manipulates steals…..as we should…but in a way that we should stop and get out…instead we bargain and plead and deny and bring ourselves down to ground zero while they are adding fuel to the fire and moving on. We are stuck in despair. Until we see the truth and reality – they are bad for us in our lives – they make bad choices – and they cant be consistent and giving and real. BAD MATCH.
So what Im saying is…
Good Grief, you wrote:
“The absolute hardest part to hear, the hardest part to accept, is that she doesnt even want to know me anymore. at the very least I was a great friend to her and it’s not fair in my opinion for her to not wonder about me or like you all say, not even want to know me anymore. I hate that part of it. I considered her my best friend and we were real tight I thought, I never wronged her in any way”so why wouldn’t she even want to know me anymore? why would she not ever wonder how I’m doing, what I think, if I miss her and why would she never ever think of me or miss me? I know there are no answers to that, but that part doesn’t make sense to me.”
I keep following your thread, and the more you write, the more honest and clear your writing seems. Here are a few thoughts about this last bit:
First, it’s kind of a cliche, but only because it’s so true. It is almost unbearable to learn that someone we love doesn’t love us back. Even more unbearable, when for some reasons they’ve been making loving noises and moves. We feel blindsided, like we’ve been invited to a dinner party and find ourselves in an empty room with nothing on the table.
I think this happens to everyone at least once in their lives. The other person doesn’t have to be a sociopath. Just someone who has private issues that we didn’t know about. Maybe unspoken family problems. Maybe PSTD from some old trauma. Maybe they were pretending because they were on the rebound or needed some kind of emotional shelter for other reasons. Or maybe they were just immature, and not particularly consistent or organized in their feelings. Or worst case, they were a sociopath, and they were deliberately using us.
Whatever, it’s not something we know about, and we are left feeling like the rules of the world don’t work anymore. And that is something that shows up in your paragraph above, about the unfairness of the situation. What she would do if things were fair. The problem, however, is not one of fairness, but that you don’t know and may never know the real mechanics of this situation. Whether she changed her mind, got scared of the big move, had something going on with someone else, or whatever, the net of it is that she backed away and disappeared. And you are left, thinking that everything worked and then suddenly it just stopped. And there’s no sense in it.
You were good to her. It’s clear that you did everything you could to support this relationship. You did it gladly because you believed in her and the relationship, but you also went out of your way to do that. In business, there’s a term called “opportunity risk.” That means that we give up other opportunities to focus on one, and because of that, we face the risk of not only the failure of that opportunity, but the loss of all the others. You have a situation like this. You invested a lot of time and energy in this, and it came to nothing.
So you are left with not just the loss of her and the relationship, but also the loss of your time, effort, hope, caring and whatever else you put into it, and also the other things you could have been developing for yourself during that period. That’s a lot. And to make matters worse, you’re still losing it, because sorting it out is taking so much time and energy. If this were a business deal, we might call it throwing money down a rathole. But on the other hand, if this were a business that you had started and it failed, it would probably be easier to stand back and say, “Okay, what did I learn from this for the next business I start?”
When our hearts are involved, we make ourselves very vulnerable. And when we get so involved that we begin to plan our future together, the loss is not just today’s loss but it puts a big hole in our plans. We have to figure out where we are again, trying to imagine the future all over again. And that’s hard to do when we’re still feeling the sting of failure.
But there’s an old saying that you can’t get around grief. You have to go through it. And that means, you have to stop arguing about it — with her, with yourself, with God or the universe — and face the truth and how you feel about it. Fair or not, the situation is what it is. Whatever you did, however good you were, however much you trusted what she said, whatever you did out of love and trusting her, it came out that she decided to disappear from your life. Even writing this, it make me feel like saying, “Ouch, ouch, ouch!” You don’t know why, and you as well have been run over by a truck you didn’t see coming, and left to heal up on your own, not know who or what to blame.
This is a sad, bad, awful thing and you have every right to be upset. It’s understandable that you’re looking for answers and want to make some kind of sense of it for your own peace of mind. But even if you did understand exactly what happened and even if it was something that you could totally sympathize with and she came out of it blameless, it wouldn’t make any difference really. You lost your girl. You lost the future you had planned. You lost all the investments you made in that relationship. And you are here, alone, with your losses.
Every one of us here has, at one time or another, tried to sort this out with the person who made us feel this way. And no matter what we got back from them — and with sociopaths what we usually get back ranges from totally ignoring us to brutal abuse — it didn’t change our situation. All of us eventually come to terms with a few things. One is that we made a mistake. Maybe with the best of intentions and with all the apparent evidence that it wasn’t a mistake, but it turned out to be one. The other is that the situation wasn’t caused by us, and it was out of our control. We did the best we could, but it came out badly for us.
Life sometimes sucks. We get involved with the wrong people. We make choices that turn out bad for us. Things are going on that we didn’t know about, and we get blindsided. It’s not just in love. It happens in our families, our work, driving our cars, on vacation, whatever. We get disappointed, though that’s hardly a big enough word for some of these disasters. But ultimately, that’s the truth. Life disappoints us.
And ultimately, if we want any peace, happiness and the ability to create the life we want, we give up fighting with it, and we shift our attention to something that is more likely to work out for us. It sometimes take a while to do that, and you’re in the middle of that process now, of facing the reality that this isn’t your fault but it is also out of your control.
From everything you write, you sound like a kindhearted, smart, sensitive, hardworking person. And you quite reasonably don’t like the idea that this whole deal went south. You’re still trying to save it, or to save something out of it. If nothing else, at least an acknowledgment that you did the right thing, all the right things, and that you earned that acknowledgment. Maybe through some kind of residual friendship, maybe through a kind of magical turnaround where she admits she’s briefly lost her mind and wants to come back, or maybe just through a letter that tell you it wasn’t your fault.
And there is always the possibility that something like that will come back to you. I can well imagine you running into her sometime in the future and learning what really happened, and discovering for whatever reason that she just wasn’t ready or she was scared or she had other problems that you didn’t know about.
But right now, the more important thing is getting over it. Because whatever her reasons, the reality of the situation is that she is gone and you are left with all these painful feelings. No matter what happens in the future, with her or without her, you need to recover yourself as an independent person. Because you can’t get into another relationship, with her or without her, until you’re not angry, not needing someone else to fix you, and feeling like you are internally calm and strong enough to afford to take some emotional risks again.
And you will get there. You’ll get there faster if you stop fighting this, and face the losses and let yourself be sad. Just sad. For what was and is gone, in the past and present, as well as the plans you made for the future. You might be angry. That’s fine; it’s part of it. Some of us wind up having big, angry conversations with our ex’s (in unsent letters, mostly) or other people who try to tell us it’s not important or even with God. I had a friend who, after her son died, stood in her backyard and yelled at God. That’s okay too. But ultimately, we get to crying for what we lost, and that’s when things get really healthy, because then we begin to realize that, whatever we lost, we’re still alive with a whole life ahead of us.
You’ll come through this. And you’ll still be the same kind, smart, active investor in life that you were before. And you’ll be a little smarter, perhaps, about what you will and won’t accept in your life. And you’ll find someone better, maybe someone like her or not, but definitely someone who will be more honest about herself and who is able to care about your feelings as much as you care about hers. You know that you deserve that. I hear it in everything you write. And if you really believe it, she will show up.
I hope you keep writing.
Kathy