Ending a Relationship by Using the Silent Treatment

As I’ve mentioned before, I like to look at the key phrases people use to find this website. A surprising amount of searches follow some form of “Should I break up using the Silent Treatment?”  It is as if the searcher is hoping that if they ignore their partner, the relationship will magically go away.  Being the person to end a relationship is hard for a number of reasons, so it is understandable that one would want to skip the hard part and have things be done.

There are multiple problems with using the silent treatment instead of communicating the end of the relationship.  The biggest issue is that you haven’t stated that the relationship is over: all you have done is withdrawn communication.  As far as your partner is concerned, you are still together but now you are giving him or her the Silent Treatment.  Another issue is that, instead of your partner cooperating with this unspoken breakup by disappearing from your life, they are more likely to increase their attention as they attempt to find out why you have suddenly withdrawn into silence.  You can expect to get many phone calls, emails, and texts asking you what is going on.  If you outlast your partner’s curiosity, and successfully get them to disappear from your life by steadfastly ignoring them, you still have one last issue to deal with.  You left a relationship completely unresolved.  This is a problem because unresolved relationships are chock full of issues that will follow you into the next relationship you have.  You can trade this partner for another, but you remain the same person with the same emotional issues, so if you believe that you’ve gotten out of dealing with those issues by leaving a relationship in this manner, you will be unhappy to find them all over again in the next relationship.

If you are tempted to leave a relationship by using the Silent Treatment, there are other options that will be more satisfying for you in the long run.  The first thing to do is spend a little time looking inside and asking yourself what it is you want to avoid by not breaking up in person.  Are you afraid of expressing your anger directly and do you want to punish your partner?  Are you worried that your partner will be angry with you for breaking up?  Is some part of you afraid that you don’t have permission to break up and that your partner won’t let you do so?  Are you afraid that wanting to break up makes you a bad person somehow?  Are you not sure you really want to break up, and are you hoping that the decision will be made for you based on your partner’s reaction to the Silent Treatment?  Does some part of you want to move on but not really let your partner do so?  Really explore here to discover just what it is you are afraid of, and find a way to address your fears first.

After you have addressed your fears, if you feel certain that you want to break up, you will need to gather the courage to tell your partner that you are ending the relationship.  It won’t be easy, nor is your partner likely to thank you for it, so it helps to know for yourself what the benefits are to a truthful breakup rather than a sneaky one.  The biggest benefit is that there is no guesswork on either side: your partner is not guessing about why you’ve gone silent, and you aren’t guessing how he or she feels, or when they are going to contact you or stop contacting you, and you know that the relationship is indeed over.  There are other possibilities that could come with a well-communicated break up.  You might get an opportunity to air your grievances and possibly receive validation and an apology.  You might receive some feedback, however uncomfortable, about how you contributed to the relationship dynamic that caused the breakup.  This gives you the chance to change things for a future relationship.  At the very least, you had the courage to be truthful to yourself and your partner about the end of your relationship.  Ending a relationship in this courageous and truthful manner makes things clear and uncomplicated, and a clear ending opens you up to forward motion and growth.

Other posts you might find interesting:

Disengaging from the Silent Treatment and Engaging with Each Other: An Experiment for You

You Invested Energy Into It, but That Doesn’t Mean You Should Keep It

When the Silent Treatment Feels Like Your Only Option

“Handling” Conflict by Ignoring the Problem

Finding the Courage to Leave a Relationship

Communicating About Taking Space in a Relationship: An Alternative to the Silent Treatment

Being Truthful in Relationship Means Sometimes Saying Things People Don’t Want to Hear

The Joy of Facing a Fear

My daughter is learning how to pedal bike, which means she is also learning quite a bit about facing her fears. Recently, she learned to pedal small distances without me holding her bike. This increased rather than decreased her fear of falling. For a while, the better she got, the more scared she was. The other day, she broke through her fear and pedaled further than ever without any help. I could tell that she understood biking in a new way because she had a smile on her face as she chugged along.

On the day of her breakthrough, she was adamant that she did not want to bike because she was afraid she would fall. For her, the fear of falling was much more about fear of the unknown pain she might endure. She finally agreed to bike after I talked to her at great length about what it is like to fall from a bike, complete with examples of past bike falls I’ve had, and a comical demonstration of me flying off of her little bike and not getting seriously hurt. Having a bit of a picture, she agreed to bike, and for the first time, she had fun riding without my help.

She talked later about how she “faced her feels.” If she hadn’t faced her fears (or feels), she would not have discovered the joy of pedaling on her own. If she’d decided to stop biking altogether right then and there, she would have missed out on what could be a long relationship with her bike, one that could take her on many adventures. Yesterday, she had one of those adventures. She fell and got her first “bike boo-boo” and she is quite proud of it. Today she did a happy wiggle-dance while showing her teacher her band-aid and telling her a rather embellished tale of flipping over her handlebars and flying through the air and getting a boo-boo.

The tale is epic because the feelings are epic. Her worst fear about biking was realized, and nothing horrible happened, AND she got a cool band-aid that she wears like a badge of courage. The scary unknown is a little more known and turns out not to be so scary after all, and she’s feeling the exhilaration that comes from being released from the captivity of fear.

As adults, it can be much harder to face the fear that comes from doing something new and unfamiliar, especially if life has been fairly predictable for a long time.  It helps to remember the payoff that comes from facing our fears. There may be pain involved, just as my daughter learned from falling yesterday, but then we are free because the fear no longer is keeping us from moving forward. Think of a fear you want to face, and let the adventure begin. You can practice your proud happy dance right now.

More posts you may find interesting:

Crashing into Trash Cans

Scapegoating Others for Our Emotional Situations

Yesterday, my daughter was in a terrible mood.  She didn’t eat enough, and she skipped her nap.  The littlest things would trigger the biggest tantrums.  Whoever happened to step on the landmine of her bad mood was the person she thought was causing the bad mood.  For a three-year-old, this makes perfect sense.  Screaming from being too hungry and tired is too abstract of a concept.  A more concrete concept is: you did something I didn’t like and now I am screaming at you, therefore it is your fault I am screaming.  We repeated this pattern throughout the day.  One of us would do something that our daughter thought we should know she didn’t like, and she’d scream.  I told her it isn’t okay to scream at people just because you don’t like what they are doing, and  that the reason she was doing so is that she didn’t get enough sleep.  She’d respond by saying, “No, that person did this thing and that’s why I’m mad.”  She really wanted me to accept that holding the door for her when she wanted to hold it herself merited a screaming tantrum.  I wanted her to understand that she wouldn’t be having screaming tantrums if she just ate some food and got more sleep.

We ended the day at an impasse, but the whole situation made me think about how, as adults, we sometimes mirror this same behavior.  Sometimes we just want something to be someone else’s fault.  In the short term, it feels satisfying to have a villain to blame.  In the long term, there’s no real way to fix things if our emotional state is someone else’s fault and responsibility.  I will share a personal example.  I was once in a relationship with an emotionally distant man who was never going to be able to give me the committed relationship I wanted.  He provided me with multiple opportunities to feel horribly wronged, and I got a sense of satisfaction from complaining about him to my friends.  This went on for quite some time, until a very wise friend pointed out that this particular man was very predictable in his behavior and she wanted to know why I continued to see him, knowing just what I could expect from him.  I had no answer to this question.  I could no longer blame him for my unhappiness.  I realized that the fix was my responsibility, not his.  The relationship did not last much longer after that moment.

When I stopped blaming someone else for my unhappiness, I was able to see what was truly making me unhappy, which turned out to have nothing to do with any relationship.  I was deeply unsatisfied with many things in my life that needed changing, but it had been much easier to find a scapegoat.  Easier, that is, until I discovered that having a scapegoat meant nothing ever changing.  Dating a scapegoat meant dating a deep feeling of dissatisfaction.  Discovering that the problem was within myself to fix was terrifying and wildly exhilarating, and most importantly freeing.  I am hoping that one day I can teach my daughter in very small ways that she is free when she stops blaming others for what she can fix herself.  I’m starting with these smaller causes of her emotional state in the hopes that she can apply this lesson to the bigger things later.

Learning to Use Words

My daughter recently turned three, and this is an age of great leaps in communication skills for her and her friends. When she started going to school in January, she experienced conflict with other classmates that sometimes turned physical, with her on the receiving end of pushes, head-bonks, bites, etc. The first time this happened, her teacher told me that the child who hurt my daughter did so because she didn’t have the words yet to express frustration, so acted physically instead. This struck me deeply, and helped me to understand so much about toddler behavior. There are many ways that toddlers act out when they don’t know how to use their words yet. They scream, push, grab, and/or bite until they learn to use words to express the intense feelings they are having, or to ask for what they want. It’s normal, and completely understandable even if it is incredibly annoying to us as adults.

At three, my daughter and her friends are going through an exciting transition. They are all learning (in increments, of course) how to use their words rather than act like wild animals to express frustration or desire. The other day in class, I was moved and impressed to witness a classmate asking my daughter if she could hug her, AND accepting her answer of “No.” In the past she would run up to her and grab her, which didn’t go over very well. Yesterday, I accidentally bumped my daughter’s head with something I was carrying. She started to have a screaming tantrum, but then was able to calm down and say to me that she was mad that I had walked too close to her and bumped her head. I thanked her for telling me, apologized, and said that her words helped me to know what I did to hurt her, and showed me how to avoid hurting her in the future. If she had just screamed, I wouldn’t have this knowledge, and the likelihood of it happening again was greater than it was now.

As adults, there are ways in which we still haven’t learned to use our words to express our feelings or to ask for what we want. While most of us have learned not to bite, scream, push, or grab, we’ve developed more “civilized” ways to bypass the use of language that authentically communicates our feelings or desire. We may not scream like wild animals anymore, but we may angrily berate our partners without giving them a chance to respond. We may not bite, but instead rely on vindictive behavior such as the silent treatment or flirtation with someone else to purposely hurt our partner’s feelings. Instead of grabbing, we might just take something we want without asking first, because it is easier to apologize later than it is to ask permission.

All of us have reached adulthood with some gaps in our emotional education, and when we behave like toddlers, it only means that we have something to learn. It is scary to learn to use words for the things that we’re afraid to express. It is difficult to change a lifelong habit, but it is worth the effort. For my daughter, learning to use words enables her to address specific things that hurt her and upset her, and this reduces the odds of her experiencing future pain. Words do the same thing for the adult who relies on pain-inflicting behavior rather than expressing their feelings. The child who asks for a hug might not get one at first, but is also not going to be met with the screams and pushes that come when she grabs and tackles the person she wants to hug. When we learn to use our words rather than rely on animal behavior, our relationships lose a lot of painful drama and chaotic noise. This clears the way for exciting communication and deep enjoyment of each other.

Are You Human Enough? The Mother’s Day Edition

There has been a ton of buzz around the latest cover of Time magazine, the one with the mother breastfeeding her toddler next to the title “Are You Mom Enough?” The goal of the picture is to shock people who aren’t accustomed to seeing this sort of thing, and the goal of the title is to feed the flames of the “Mommy Wars” which is a manufactured controversy made up to sell magazines and to create heated comment sections online.  I personally don’t know any mommies who are at war with any other real mommies.  I do know plenty of mothers (and fathers) who are at war with an impossible ideal of perfection in parenting.  Many of us are already asking ourselves whether we are “Mom enough,” and we don’t need the shock-seeking Time staff to try stir that pot any more than it is already being stirred on a daily basis.

On Mother’s Day especially, the ideal of perfection in mothering is written on many Mother’s Day Cards.  Mothers are endlessly patient; always know what their children need; give cheerfully without asking for anything in return; never seem to need space, and so on.  The mother on the cover of Time glares out from the magazine stand and Time says, “Are you Mom enough?  Can you do THIS?”  I imagine her next move is to do gymnastics while nursing… We are meant to believe that she’s judging us, but my guess is that she is, like the rest of us, scrambling to live up to her own ideal of the perfect mommy.

The problem with the ideal of the perfect mother is that behavior gets split into extremes: perfect is good and acceptable while human is bad and unacceptable.  This leads us to hide or bury our humanness in the shadows, separated from the rest of reality.  The unspoken message we give to our children by burying humanness in favor of the ideal is that it is also not okay for them to be perfect.  Unspoken messages are the most powerful ones, and the most confusing, especially if we say something completely different with our words.  So, today for Mother’s Day, I ask all mothers this: Are you human enough?  What ideal are you trying to meet that is keeping you from being real with yourself and your children?  What have you pushed into the shadows for fear that you won’t be the perfect mom?  Shine some light onto those human parts, admit that you will never be perfect, and neither will the woman on Time, your own mother, the your kids’ friends’ mothers, or any mother that has ever lived.

 

Labeling People versus Addressing Their Behaviour

The other day, my daughter told me that she doesn’t like two of the kids in her class because one of them asks why too much, and the other cries. She then labeled the two children as “The Why-er” and “The Crier.” I restrained myself from laughing at the irony of this, since she probably asks “Why?” about six hundred times a day, and she has plenty of tantrums herself. I mustered up my best serious voice and tried to talk to her in toddlerese about seeing people beyond the one or two actions that we don’t like. I caught myself about to say things like, “It isn’t very nice to call people names just because you don’t like something they did.” But then I realized that I would be telling her she is not being nice, and she would hear that as me calling her a name because I didn’t like what she did.  Also, doing something to be “nice” just doesn’t get to the heart of things.  I dislike “nice” as a motivator for this reason.

So I tried to break it down further. I told her that everybody does things we dislike, but those same people also do things that we like. If we decide that somebody is bad because we don’t like something they did, then we won’t be able to see the fun things they do, the things we like.  Then when we are with this person, we can’t have fun because we’re waiting for them to do what we don’t like.  Also, if someone IS what we don’t like, then they can’t change, and we are stuck feeling yucky with this person who won’t stop doing what we don’t like.

I don’t know whether she absorbed any of this, but it did get me thinking about how, as adults, we can act just like toddlers in this very way; labeling people based on actions that we dislike. Once we label someone, it is very difficult to see beyond that label. Our experience becomes limited by the label we give, and all future interactions are seen through the filter of the label, furthering our intolerance of that person and heightening our feelings of annoyance.  In addition to this, we unconsciously disallow ourselves from doing anything that would cause us to be like “that person,” since we’re behaving as if actions make an identity.

As an alternative to labeling, I am trying to teach my daughter to say things such as, “I don’t like it when you ask me so many why questions,” rather than, “I don’t like you because you are a Why-er.”  This is a good thing to try as an adult, as well.  We can notice when we label our friends, family, co-workers as if their actions make them permanently and hopelessly a certain kind of person.  The partner who didn’t hear what we said because they were distracted isn’t necessarily a bad listener.  What if we say, “I don’t like it when you can’t hear me because you are distracted,” rather than, “You are a bad listener”?   The odds of this person changing their behavior will increase dramatically if we can name the behavior rather than label the person, and this opens our world up to enjoyable, satisfying possibilities.  Take away the labels and you’ll find movement in all of your relationships.

Being with Things As They Truly Are

I haven’t written in this blog for a while because my household has been doing what I call “Immunity Boot Camp.” All of us have had multiple illnesses since our daughter started preschool in January. Needless to say, writing here was on the bottom of the to-do list. It may still be a low priority for a while, but today I have something on my mind and nobody is sick and somebody is napping, and I am here writing.

In addition to our recent three-month slog through the germs, our infant son has decided recently that sleeping is not something we do at night. I have not met with this new development gracefully. In fact, there have been many nights in which I’ve ranted and cussed about it to my husband at some ungodly hour, which turns out to not be helpful to anyone involved.

Recently, during one of these screamy wakey nights, I remembered something that I read in a book about Buddhism some years ago. It said that in any situation you dislike, you cause yourself much more suffering by wishing things were different than how they are at present. That night I realized that I was making things much worse by holding onto the idea that my son should be sleeping and that I should be as well. I had not accepted that I was, in fact, awake and that my son was not going to suddenly allow me to sleep.

The moment I accepted this fact, everything changed. I relaxed a little. I was no longer busy trying to change the truth of the matter. I made the statement to myself that I was indeed awake and that I might be for a while, and that there was no other reality than that. I’m not saying that I suddenly handled my son’s sleep issues gracefully. It was still loud and screamy and frustrating, but fractionally less so than it had been when I was wishing things were different.

My anger was replaced by two things: compassion and a slight bit of clarity. I felt compassion toward my son and recognized that he wasn’t screaming with the sole intent of keeping us awake. He really wanted help with something and his only way of saying so was to scream. I went into problem-solving mode and was able to help him eventually calm down enough until he could sleep. While I did not get a full night’s sleep, and probably won’t for a long time, I no longer feel tense and angry when he wakes up crying. I’m learning that the quality of sleep, no matter how scarce, is much better when I am not feeling anger and tension during the waking hours.

This lesson can be applied to many areas in life. No matter what you are going through, if you are holding onto an idea of what it “should” be rather than dealing with what it is, then you are suffering more than necessary. This doesn’t mean that accepting the truth will release you from all suffering, but it does mean that your suffering will be reduced if you are not fighting the truth of the situation, and your energy will be freed up to tackle whatever needs tackling.

You may also find this post interesting:

The Dishwasher of Inevitability

Sharing the World with Others

Being a toddler, my daughter struggles with the concept of sharing with others. She likes to play with friends, but she also wants to have things go exactly her way. She gets frustrated when they don’t. She is learning a painful but important lesson about what it means to live in the world with other human beings: it is impossible to be with others and have things go exactly how you want them to at all times.  There are benefits to learning this lesson, however, and I try to explain them as best I can in toddlerese. I tell my daughter that when she shares toys with friends, they might teach her ways to play with them that she might not have thought of before. When this happens, her world becomes even more interesting, and her toys more exciting.

Everyone that you have ever had a relationship with has contributed to your experience of the world, which makes life more interesting and fills it with more depth. Some of these relationships may have ended on a sour note, and some of them are still going on happily but all have influenced your life in some way. These influences helped make you the person you are today.

Here is a fun exercise to try: pick one or a few people from each decade that you have been alive. It could be someone you met once, or someone that was always there. Think of something that they did or said that positively influenced you. (I say positively, because this is meant to be a fun exercise). It could be in a seemingly small way, or in a much larger way. Take note of how this memory still impacts you today. For example, I will never forget being silently terrified on a plane when I was five, when a flight attendant smilingly gave me ice cream with a cherry on top. His action taught me that kindness can greatly reduce suffering, and even more than three decades later, I know this with all of my heart. This knowledge contributes to my emotional resilience and to my willingness to try to help ease suffering in others.

The people in this exercise helped to make you who you are. Whether they are still in your life, or even still alive, you carry a piece of them around with you every time you do whatever it is that they inspired in you. The converse is also true: by sharing your world, you have inspired others and contributed to who they are. Going forward with this knowledge, how would you like to influence the world that you continue to share with others?

Telling Your Partner What You Want- The Valentine’s Day Version

A common relationship dynamic is the loaded question. You want something specific from your partner.  Instead of stating the desire, you ask a seemingly innocent question with a correct answer in mind.  If the question is answered incorrectly, you punish your partner for getting it wrong.  Maybe you want a romantic evening on Valentine’s Day, but feel vulnerable saying so.  Instead of saying “I’d really like to have a romantic evening together on Valentine’s Day, ” you say, “What would you like to do for Valentine’s Day?”  in the hopes that your partner will answer with, “Why, let’s do something romantic!”  If your partner assumes this is a genuine question and answers with something like, “I was hoping to lay low and not make a big deal out of the day,” she or he is in for a shock when you respond angrily, sulk, or give the silent treatment.  Any chance for romance is gone now, and you probably are blaming your partner, but it is not their fault that they did not read your mind.

Sometimes, it is scary to tell your partner that you want something.  Doing so is not a guarantee that you will get the thing you want, but it is the best way to deepen your relationship.  By telling your partner that you want something specific, especially a vulnerable specific something, you invite them to see into your inner world, and this is where intimacy lies.  You are also inviting your partner to tell you what they want.  If they accept this invitation to intimacy, this allows you to see into their inner world.  Saying that you want to have a romantic Valentine’s Day can be scary because it reveals something vulnerable about yourself; however,  if you do, you increase your chance for romance, even if it doesn’t take place on Valentine’s Day, even if no flowers, dinner, or lovemaking occur.

You increase your chance for romance because you increase the chance for truth between you and your partner.  Your partner might have a very good reason to want to lay low on Valentine’s Day.  It could be there was an emotionally painful series of Valentine’s Days in the past that created some dark associations with the traditional rituals that come with this holiday.  This is quite common, actually.  Now the two of you have an opportunity to compromise, and to come up with your very own definition of romance, your very own way of celebrating your love.  You now know much more about each other than you did before the conversation arose, and you both can decide if you would like to go deeper into gaining knowledge of each other.  To me, this revealing and discovering of each other fills  any gesture that you exchange on Valentine’s Day or any other day with authentic romance.

Other posts you might find interesting:

Hollywood’s Version of Love isn’t Very Truthful

Mind-Reading, Guessing Games and Communication Breakdowns in Relationship

Being Truthful in Relationships Means Sometimes Saying What People Don’t Want to Hear

 

Knowing What is Important

It is easy to get caught up in the rush of activity that comes with a busy and full life. We revert to autopilot as we rush around, and this affects all of our relationships. If you are in autopilot much of the time, it is difficult to switch back to the present moment. You might seem like you are sitting still, but in your mind, you are planning the next several activities and destinations. Whoever is in front of you can seem more like an obstacle on your path rather than someone you care about. It is hard to slow down enough to really be with yourself much less another.

Today I offer an experiment.  As you go about your daily tasks, build in some micro-moments to ask yourself the following questions:

What is important in this moment?

Why is this thing important?

What is not important in this moment?

What is getting more of my attention right now: the important thing or the unimportant one?

If I am focusing on something unimportant, why?

How can I switch my focus and attend to what is important in this moment?

A good time for building in the micro-moments is when you are feeling tense.  Tension usually points to a need to bring focus to your state of mind.  Just now, I did my own experiment.  I often write blog posts while my infant son entertains himself nearby.  A few minutes ago, I noticed myself getting tense, trying to type faster while my son started to grump.  What was important was attending to his needs.  It was important because I am committed to being his mother more than to being a blogger.  In the moment he was fussing, the blog post was not important.  I confess that for a moment, I was giving the blog more attention than my son, which was making me tense.  The reason I gave the blog post more attention was that I have an arbitrary desire to complete posts in one sitting.  I switched my focus to my son and we played together.  I was rewarded with the most adorable smiles and coos and giggles.  These moments don’t last long in a baby’s life, and I am happy to say that I was right there for that particular one.  Now he is back to entertaining himself, and I am able to finish this post, but with much less tension.  Try this experiment on yourself today, and see what importance awaits your attention.

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