Dh and silent treatment

[bobslay28]

I would preface this by saying I know MN can be quite dismissive of stepfamilies but I'd ask for this to be treated like a 'normal' family if possible. My dh and I have been together since my ds was 4, he's now 13 so most of his life. We have dc together now too and for the most part ds and dh have always had a brilliant relationship. It's only now he's reached the teenage years we're seeing some issues and I think that's probably standard in most families.

Anyway dh is a lovely man but he is prone to giving the silent treatment whenever he's annoyed. It's the one thing I hate about him. It creates such a bad atmosphere in the house and actually makes me very upset and anxious. I've explained this to him but he can't seem to help himself retreating into a sulk if he feels he's been offended or upset.

Yesterday ds and I were having a chat about school and dh kept interrupting telling us to hurry up and get ready as we had to be somewhere. It was very frustrating especially since every interruption meant the conversation was taking longer to finish. Ds in the end said 'shut up you d*' to him. Now I know this is totally unacceptable and he was immediately pulled up on it. I told him he can't speak to adults like that and reiterated it again to him later in the day too.

But since then dh has flat out blanked him and says he'll continue to do so until he gets an apology. No mention of him apologising for interrupting us though.

They haven't spoken since and this morning I walked in to breakfast to see them walking around each other and not talking. It was fucking pathetic. I think because I hate it so much I am now very annoyed at dh for doing it to my ds. We have plans this weekend as a family and I'm so close to telling them both we'll cancel it all unless they sort it out. But mostly I'm annoyed with dh as he's an adult and my ds is a child.

How can I speak to him/them about this?

My ex did this to my oldest son years ago, i left him. It was abusive, i hate people who resort to silent treatment. Your son should he apologising though

OP, I am the daughter of a silent treatment sulker, the pattern was set long before I was born, being the youngest of four. For my father, it was about no longer being the person in control as we grew up and started to think and speak for ourselves. My mother thought her role was to keep the peace, so we walked on egg shells around him, it was ghastly and scary.

I stopped talking to him when I was 15 because I could see him repeating his patterns of behaviour that he had inflicted on my siblings on me and I would not put up with that. He died shortly after my 19th birthday, I did not attend his funeral and have never regretted that decision. In later years, family friends told me that he really respected me for standing up to me, rather sad that he did not tell me that.

You say that you do not wish to bang heads together, well I think you might have to before this behaviour becomes entrenched. They each need to apologise and accept the apology gracefully. They also need to be told that as each of them grows older this may almost happen again, but they both need to be sensible enough to avoid it and step away from the precipice because the next time this happens, you will leave, alone an leave the pair of them to deal with the consequences.