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,
Read LTL post on another archive, to refresh your memory of how this girl treated you. And don’t make excuses for her behavior. Just as you remember the good times, don’t dismiss her shady behavior either. That is the TOTAL package of this girl. This silent treatment, this is how she chose to END your relationship.
If you didn’t disregard what she said to her cousin (or whoever) at the party, she said the realtionship WAS over THEN. She already told “her people” you were history.
Tell me WHY she hasn’t contacted you?? Pray tell what would you consider an “excusable” reason for this?
How many ways do you need her to indicate to you this relationship is OVER, at least for HER it is.
When a girl tells her friends/cousin/mother that she is not with someone any more (you) that means something, don’t you think? How do you percieve that?
Good Grief:
And any girl who thinks that a man still wants her when that man has clearly moved on to another girl is a Narcissist, at minimum!
Good Grief:
These creatures are notorious for keeping a few “spares” in the garage. What I mean by that is they always keep an old one or two hanging on when they’ve absolutely exhausted their current victim. They also never move on until they’ve got their replacement victim (aka something newer and better) in place.
In your shoes I’d pay a PI for a couple of days work to follow her. You’ll get the photos. You won’t like what’s in the photos. But, you will have your answers.
Good Grief,
I would take what Matt said very seriously.
If you don’t have enough on this girl by how she has treated you, then this is the way to go.
ONCE and for all you can stop torturing yourself by what you THINK “you don’t know” although I think in your hear that you do know.
Some people need proof
Dear Good Grief,
I haven’t posted much to your comments because i thought everyone else is doing a marvelous job and giving you the WORLD’sBEST ADVICE.
You know though, I am going to give you some LOVING AND CARING INIFORMATION…. right now you are ALL ABOUT YOU, your are all about “I just want X, so I will rewrite this letter and then _____”
I am not going to write a volume to you, you have already had VOLUMES of great advice give to you, which you seem to have IGNORED. You continue to write and write and write, like you are obscessed, which I figure if it looks like obscession and sounds like obscession it is probably obscession.
You still seem to be STUCK in this MAGICAL THINKING of
“If I can find just the right letter she will see the light and come running back to me on her knees and say she loves me and she’s sorry.”
No matter HOW MANY TIMES people say the same thing to you, you come back with a “Yes, you’re right BUT I WANT TO….” and you write another version of this letter that if you piled them together would look like “word-salad-War-and-Peace”
HERE IS THE “LETTER” YOUR GF LEFT FOR YOU:
Dear Good Grief,
I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU OR I WOULD TALK TO YOU. I LIED TO YOU ABOUT THE PHONE, THE CAR, AND EVERYTHING ELSE, BECAUSE I DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS WHAT YOU THINK.
DON’T BOTHER CALLING, WRITING, OR THINKING ABOUT ME. I HAVE MOVED ON TO ANOTHER PERSON. YOU ARE NOT WHAT I WANT.
Signed, GF
READ HER “LETTER”—-it requires NO ANSWER, it is CLEAR as GLASS! She does NOT want you. It does NOT matter why, and she will never tell you WHY.
Start READING HERE, read the old archived articles, ONE BY ONOE, and gain some knowledge about what she is and some knowledge about WHY YOU FELL FOR HER.
It isn’t that I am unempathetic, because I definitely am. I have been “screwed, blued, and tattooed” by every form of psychopath my entire life, and so have the others here. WE KNOW what obscession with them is, but WE FINALLY started to get the message in our Ps “letters” to us. In all cases the message, whether we left them or they left us is that :
“I DON’T GIVE A RAT”S BEHIND ABOUT YOU.”
They are incapable of loving, only using others.
Quit focusing on her and start focusing on yourself, it is the ONLY way you will start to quit hurting. ((((Hugs)))) and my sincere prayers fo r you, GG
Witsend- a hard hard truth that is
Rosa- yeah, she TOLD me she contacted him after after 7 years. He was there when she got in her unbelivable accident. They only knew each other for a little while but really hit it off but I guess the trauma and drama of what happened got in between them. He always talked about it and she didn’t want to relive it. Then he said he was moving to her town and when he got there he spent the night. Apparently when she got home he had moved all his stuff in and she flipped out and made him leave. Not sure how he took all that but he did develop a drug problem afterwards I cure in regards to what he had seen happen to her. Anyway, yeah, she told me she told him why she remembered why she liked him in the first place 7 years later, while she was still living with her ex but they had supposedly broken up. That was right before she met me. I was definitly surprised she told me she told him that despite the fact he lived far away and had a girlfriend of many years. Who knows, now that she moved back near him maybe he’s the one now…
Matt- not gonna do that cuz I don’t want to know. I know she wasn’t ready to move here but that’s how it fells, like I was a contingency plan
Good Grief,
I posted on Coldest Man Ever Article. After you read all you went through and probably SO MUCH MORE that you conditioned yourself programmed yourself to ignore and accept and write off….I also think perhaps you, like me and so many of us have FEAR OF REJECTION and REJECTION issues…and this stands out to me in particular
“I left my phone in my car that’s been in the shop since Wednesday, plus my mom’s network has not been working at her house so I wasn’t able to email you either”.. I literally walked with my laptop to a coffee place blocks away so I could send you this”..It’s been a bad week—I haven’t been able to do anything for our anniversary so I’m apologizing in advance”.
My car’s transmission is nonexistent and they are waiting for certain parts to come in”..My car died on me while I was driving it on Tuesday—I think I’m ready to go I love you, I hope you’re doing well and having a better week than I am”..
If you get this, I’ll probably be here for another 30-45 minutes or so if you want to write me back”..
Love, YOUR EXTOXIC FOR YOU GIRLFRIEND…..”
So you get the above letter and it has red flags SCREAMING…Havent bothered to contact you in days, or borrow anyones phone to do so, butCar story bogus, phone story bogus, but she throws you a potential “string you along phrase”…”think Im ready to go”….. SO WHAT DO YOU DO? Ignore the obvious and get on phone with to make moving arrangements, airline tickets (cant remember) and something else..oh you go out and buy Phish tickets as a welcoming gift… all ON YOUR OWN…because you are A NICE GUY….and because you just want to not believe all the other BS in the letter, and in your life with her, cuz you just want to believe in the dream you had with her…it had to be true.
IT WASNT. SHE WAS LIE. IT WAS ALOT OF LIES AND MANPULATION. It was you going out of your way with your money, your time, your energy…and she was in a place to be able to soak it up…while recovering (probably stringing along many others)…but all you did was on your OWN FREE WILL…almost setting the stage based on her words and totally hoping her actions were just mishaps, misunderstandings, your bad, shame on you for having instincts and gut reactions…just let her follow through with her words…thats all you have to hang on to once you left her w/her parents…. you did nothing wrong…except ALOT ON YOUR OWN FREE WILL….Rent, a house, gifts, nursing her, loving her, outings with her, doting on her, giving your all….she took it she accepted it she loved it WHO WOULDNT? and then all of a sudden she is IN OVER HER HEAD, because she is caught up in all you are OFFERING HER, LURING HER WITH, so in the moment she say MAYBE, YEAH, MAYBE THIS WILL BE AN EASIER LIFE– SO SHE SAYS YEA MABYE ILL MOVE WITH YOU (SO YOU BUY A HOUSE) AND YES, YES, YES…THIS WILL BE GOOD FOR ME NO MORE BANKRUPTCIES YES, WE WILL HAVE KIDS (SO YOU PROBABLY HAVE NAMES)…AND THEN SHE GETS A CALL FROM A GUY WHO WANTS PICTURES OF HER…SO SHE SENDS FIVE OF THEM WHILE YOU HAVE FOOD POISONING AND SHE IGNORES YOU TOTALLY AND CALLS YOU OUT FOR BEING NEEDY….BUT SHE IS SENDING PHOTOS TO OTHER GUYS DUDE!!!! AND YOU ARE HOUSE HUNTING!! SHE MAKES EVERYTHING YOU CALL HER ON THAT IS TRUE– BE ABOUT YOU BEING NEEDY OR INSECURE…AND WHEN YOU REALLY TELL HER THE TRUTH ABOUT WHO SHE IS — SHE STICKS IT TO YOU BIGTIME– SILENT TREATMENT –CUZ SHES GOT OTHERS PINING AWAY FOR HER TOO. I COULD ON, JUST WITH THE FEW THINGS YOUVE BROUGHT UP…BUT YOU HAVE TO GET INTO YOURSELF AND THE RELATIONSHIP FROM A REALISTIC POINT OF VIEW — YOU GAVE, YOU SLAVED, YOU SPENT, YOU WERE TAKEN….SHE TOOK, SHE REVELED, SHE USED, SHE ABUSED, SHE MOVED ON…
At some point you can no longer blame all of the wonderful things you did for her and she shit on you in the end — you cant blame her for the CHOICES YOU STILL CONTINUED TO MAKE IN THE FACE OF HER ACTIONS, and LIES, and STORIES. You just chose to focus on the crumbs… your choice… you on your own chose not to focus on the Actions and redflags in your gut.
You are still choosing not to look at the real picture. HER CHOICES. HER ACTIONS. You are choosing to ignore the truth… that falls on you now.
GG, You may not be out right stalking her but you are stalking her in your head. 3 weeks no contact to them is a blink. Once they go silent they want us to go away forever. 9.5 yrs of marriage, children raised together. None of it matter. He found a new victim it was time for delete. The only problem his daughter doesn’t comprehend the loss of her family as she is reaching out. His abuse psychological and possibly sexual is not sitting well with his daughter. She is not obeying no contact and now I have to pay the price with my license on the line and a charge hanging over my head because all I tried to do was to respond to the child. You lack this length of history with your ex. Same story though. You have been deleted. No matter how wonderful it was or you thought it was. You are done to her. In time, you will have never been. My ex has wives he barely recalls their names. And he could not just 6 months post divorce get my hair color, height, weight, color of my eyes, date of birth, social security number any of my descriptors right. Most he left blank but when he did attempt to put something it was wrong. I didn’t matter. My truths, the facts of my existence, didn’t matter. Only the fact that I was property, that I paid for good times, that I was low maintenance and fun when he was bored or wanted to paint the illusion to the public world that he was a happy successful family man. You need a good long hard soul wrenching cry. Snot running down your nose, hard sobbing body shaking cry. I had to repeat over and over Why God Why? Please take the pain away please make it stop. Yes I sounded like a crazy person to be sure but I had to let the pain out. I had to stop looking to the one who caused the pain to take it away because like Oxy says, “they don’t give a rat’s ass about us” That sucks but it is true. The most self respectful, strong minded, thing for you to do is stop your letter writing attempts. If you simply must, send the text Matt wrote on here earlier. She will not answer. But for arguments sake do you really think after all this pain you have experienced that it can ever be good between you again? It can’t. Too much damage done, too many explanations needed, too much work for a girl who at the very least is super immature if nothing else. You won’t be fun. You won’t be the old you. You can’t lie to yourself any longer. You want a real story with a damn good excuse and you want her to want you, her to pick up and come to you and to fulfill her promises to you. It is not going to happen. You are not going to get your happy ending even if she comes back. The dream is gone. Time to find a new reason for you to smile.
Good grief,
So, heres the deal…. we have been there. We have been in your shoes in some form or another with someone we loved. Weve been through it all in terms of utter disbelief at what we gave, did, shared, were led to believe and yes even us ourselves CHOSE to ignore, not focus on — we didnt want to believe it — in fact we could begin to phathom it – and lastly we just werent prepared and didnt have the tools to deal with such a person.
It is a devasting blow. It is simply from a person who is seemingly healthy and for reasons unknown to us — they live life – in a pathological way…lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, covering up stories — its just who they are — different from you, or me or other more empathetic people.
Its a hard truth to accept. you are right.
Its a process. Once you wrap your head around so many truthes. Was you are willing to let yourself see the hurt and pain and devastation of what happened and feel it….accept it…you will move through the process a bit more….
When you are ready…Rejection sucks in general…let alone from a disordered person or Sociopath. Its incredibly painful…and you arent willing to embrace that yet…
When you are ready…when you’ve had enough…when you can say…yeah let me spend my money on this girl wisely and get a P.I. so I can SEE THE TRUTH BEFORE ME IN MY OWN EYES….
When you are ready….its a process…but its certainly nothing you did in your letter you sent to her — all about the truth — thats about the best thing youve done for yourself so far! Released the truth, just the facts, — all that does is show her WOW, hes not such a dumbarse, suckarse afterall — he wised up and got smart — NEXT UP… a guy willing to put me on a pedestal nomatter what I do, mostly based on my physical appearance and sexual activity….I can lure em, bait em, and EAT UP AND SPIT EM OUT…or keep em…or string em along…or move on….
Good Grief:
Matt: “Not gonna do that cuz I don’t want to know.”
There it is. It is exactly what I posted to you weeks ago.
You LOVE this place that you are in. There is something about this girl or this situation that you LOVE.
But, like the drug, it will eventually drain you, tire you, bore you, and there will come a time when you will no longer LOVE it.
Then, you will finally cut your losses and move on with your life.