The Silent Treatment: Guaranteed Mutual Destruction

Communication is one of the most important aspects to a healthy relationship, however the ‘Silent Treatment’ is something that people do without considering the destructive results.

Let’s examine what happens when one is ignored.

Everyone wants and needs to be acknowledged. Being treated with silence, faced with either your partners back or being looked at right in the eyes, puts a knife into the deepest part of our soul, the part that needs to connect, the core reason to be in a relationship.

The greatest need for a human being is companionship. The feelings of rejection when faced with silence, can create a profound sense of pain that we have to deal with or, ignore. Either way, both people suffer in the short and long term.

The silent treatment is the intentional causing of pain to your partner at the deepest level. It is simply evil and a knife that cuts both of you.

There are two emotional reactions we can have when faced with silence. The first is the obvious one, frustration, which can build up to infuriation. There is nothing more infuriating than talking to someone who is ignoring you or not responding, especially when they are looking right at you.

Everyone knows this, and that’s what makes it even more infuriating. When one gets angry, and the other maintains silence, the anger grows because your pain is giving the silent one even more pleasure. That’s a snow ball rolling into an avalanche.

The next stage can go in one of two directions. The explosion of this bomb leads to a break up or, a retaliation of silence. The later is the most dangerous one, because to do that, basically to ignore the silent treatment, requires a total shut down of your emotions. 

When you shut down all your feelings so that you do not feel the infuriating pain, those closed windows and doors in your heart may not reopen to your partner for a very long time, if ever. The love dies for that person.

It’s the only way to deal with the pain of the frustration. If you observe yourself when subjected to silence, you can feel the pain in your head, in your brain, in your whole body, building up the need to explode. Or, you may feel totally numb.

It could come out in a violent manner, making you want to hit something, and dangerously, to hit your partner, or child. But before you feel horrible about that thought, which of course you should, you must bear in mind that a human being is in part animal and that when emotions take over, all common sense and ‘humanity’ can be overwhelmed.

Of course, if you are a decent person, and you get the urge to hit something, you would never hit another person, but that pain needs to be released, or stifled. Either way, a very bad result.

It is clear, the ‘silent treatment’ guarantees mutual annihilation, in this case, love and emotions are the victims. 

Communication is the core of a healthy and loving relationship. Silence is the polar opposite, and as we all know, destruction is far quicker and easier than building.

Don’t waste your life and love, and all the time it takes to build love in a childish moment of deliberately shutting out the one you love. That guarantees the end, if not today, most definitely, in time.