The Silent Treatment
Jordan and Maggie are coming up on their third wedding anniversary. They’ve known each other for quite awhile, but they are still young in their marriage and learning how to communicate well with each other.
One of the problems they kept bumping into was that when she is angry, Maggie often defaulted to giving Jordan the silent treatment. This made him angrier than if she had yelled at him, and it always escalates into a bigger fight.
While it sort of works for children, in an adult relationship, the silent treatment can be a devastating blow and inflict injuries that can destroy your marriage.
The Silent Treatment
Silence can actually be important when used for personal introspection or to process our inner feelings. This isn’t what we’re talking about, though.
What we’re talking about when we talk about the silent treatment is when a person shuts down a conversation by refusing to speak. Often, this behavior is meant to be aggressive and punitive to purposefully punish their partner.
What Maggie did to Jordan when she was angry was a particular version of the silent treatment known as stonewalling. She not only shut down any attempts at conversation, but she walled Jordan out from making any kind of attempt for repair.
In working with us, Maggie realized that she was shutting down conversation with Jordan when they were fighting because she couldn’t think fast enough to keep up with the emotionally charged pace of their arguments. She became overwhelmed and totally shut down.
While she wasn’t intending to upset Jordan when she did this, she didn’t realize the damage it was actually causing to their relationship.
Call a Timeout Instead
Each time Maggie gave Jordan the silent treatment, she was asserting her control over the situation by shutting down any hope of talking through their issues. So, we suggested that she call a timeout instead.
When you feel overwhelmed or overtaxed by the conversation at hand, use your words to request a timeout. That is to say, you can push pause on the conversation when you ask to do so.
The deal is, though, you have to give your partner a time that you will return to talk again – and when you return, you have to be ready to be present and participate in a dialogue.
Calling a timeout is actually a respectful way to give yourself space to calm down and process even a little bit, so you can engage with your partner cooperatively to fix what’s wrong.
For Maggie, this looked like going for a walk or taking a shower. The more she practiced taking a timeout, the more she realized she only needed about a half hour or so to get her head on straight, to be able to hear Jordan clearly, and work with him to find a solution.
Once they had the timeout in their tool bag, their conversations went a lot smoother and they were able to come to a resolution much quicker.
So, the next time you feel yourself getting overwhelmed in a conversation with your partner, try calling a timeout. We bet it helps you and your partner like it helped Maggie and Jordan.