How giving someone the silent treatment can damage a relationship
After more than 11 years together, Gwendolyn and Jim Mulholland found their marriage on the brink because, she admits, her use of the silent treatment had become a go-to weapon whenever problems arose.
She fully realized that it completely shut down communication — her goal — because she didn't want to deal with issues then and there and knew it was punishing Jim while giving her a sense of control.
"The silent treatment is caused by a combination of hurt feelings and an inability or unwillingness to talk about them," says Tina Gilbertson, a Portland, Ore., counselor and author of "Constructive Wallowing: How To Beat Bad Feelings by Letting Yourself Have Them" (Viva Editions). "It's easy to think of the silent person as holding the power in the situation, but in reality (she) often feels small and powerless. She really has no idea what to say or do when hurt, so she withdraws."
"Ultimately, it has nothing to do with the argument but needing to feel like you are in control of something when everything else around you is spinning out of control," echoes Mulholland, of Royal Oak, Mich.
But it's one of the worst things to do for anyone who values their relationship. New York therapist Jane Greer calls the silent treatment the "equivalent of a deadly emotional assassination. The reason it's so deadly is because it eclipses the purpose of anger, which is to use it constructively to bring about positive change going forward in a relationship," she says.
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