To give silent treatment to wife

[Crownpaints]

My wife uses silent treatment as a form of punishment towards everyone. Me, my family, her family, mutual friends, colleagues and her own friends.

Its a particularly nasty form of silent treatment, where she will turn her face away from the person speaking and pretend they don't exist, rather than giving one word answers and generally not speaking to someone.

We have lost a lot of friends / family through this.

I have always tried to maintain open communication with her when she is giving me the silent treatment. I will always try to start a conversation. I'll stop if she doesn't want to talk and try the next day. However, this makes me feel pathetic and weak.

We have been married for 11 years and her silent treatment has become worse over time, and we are setting a horrible example for our children.

Financial issues and housing are the only thing keeping us together at this point.

I feel like giving her a dose of her own medicine. She is giving me the silent treatment now and I haven't tried to initiate conversation with her but I feel terrible because it's making the situation worse.

My abusive ex used to do that, sometimes for weeks. And I don't think there was ever I time I knew what I'd done 'wrong'.

You're obviously right to be worried about what it's modelling to your children, I think you should end the relationship and show them you don't need to put up with being abused.

My mum is like this and I grew up in fear of being ignored. She still uses it as a weapon now and I’ve consequently met a partner who does it too. The smallest things can trigger them off and I once lost a pair of pyjamas my mum had given me and she ignored me for weeks. Last summer I decided that I wasn’t going to tolerate it anymore, told my partner he was abusing me and ignored my mother. I see traits of this already in my daughter and I’m worried that she will do this in the future. I will always call it out, every single time. I feel for you, it’s no way to live your life.

I really think you need to grow a backbone here. She is emotionally abusive and your children should be protected from that.

Once she starts, just see it as a time of relief from her abuse. Go out with the children and have a nice time. Use it as an opportunity to practice the happy peaceful home you are going to create for them as soon as possible.

Once she starts speaking to you again, try to tell her straight up (but calmly and politely) that you are finished with her mega-sulks and that she is managing to trash her relationship with you and her own children after she has ruined so many others.
Tell her that you will not be pandering to it to any extent- including any discussion about separation.

You and your dc deserve better.

You need to find a way for you all to move.

The silent treatment is listed as domestic violence OP. She's actually abusive. It'll be something she learned in childhood.

Tell you you're not going to stand to be abused anymore. I don't think I'd even want to leave the kids with her most of the time either.

Completely unacceptable behaviour. I would leave personally as you will not change her

Openly set a boundary with her.

You are using the silent treatment to try to manipulate me. I won’t be manipulated by you any longer. If you keep doing it it will destroy our relationship because I’m not putting up with it anymore.

She might not be speaking but she can still hear.

Silent treatment is usually done by people who know theyre in the wrong so can't discuss their position but are angry anyway. She sounds horrible OP. There are ways of dealing with it, but I am not sure you should. No one should stay together purely for finances, particularly if there are kids in the middle of it.

Leave. It is abusive. If she is the same with your kids then take your kids with you.

My mother used to be like that and personally I do think it amounts to abuse, especially when it’s directed towards people close to you.

The kids might pick up on it and do it too. I find it incredibly difficult to talk through problems, if I could I’d just not talk until it fades. It’s not a solution at all and needs to be actively worked on.

i would leave too, but importantly I would try to make sure my kids come with me, you are the adult here and need to show them that the way she behaves isn’t acceptable.

It's abusive and she is an abuser.

Name it out loud to her and tell her you're not going to tolerate it any longer.

You're a victim of domestic violence and might need outside help to make things different.

Decide what you want, do you want to give her another chance, for example if she goes to counselling?
Or do you want to leave?

It is hard standing up to an abuser, you can change and stop enabling her. You are not pathetic and weak.

Leave her she can’t change and just picture being retired and left in the home with her silent. No chaos of children to distract and likely excluded from your children’s adult lives as their partners or they won’t want her present with her behaviour.

Still young enough to rebuild.

Being blunt, a lot of damage will have already been done to the children. Yet you barely mention them.

If you had prioritised their wellbeing, you'd have been out of there long ago.

My ex used to do 3 or 4 weeks at a go. 😞
My mum does it to my dad.

Leave her for yours and your children's sake. Wishing you all the best 💐

My husband did this when we first lived together. His father was a horribly dominant, aggressive man and he had developed the silent thing because he couldn't shout and scream without being beaten but he could protest silently . It had become a habit When he came to live with us this habit appeared. He expected me to work out what he was upset about and then remedy it. That was totally unacceptable. We talked about it and how impossible it was to live in a family if you behaved like that. Tell us what has annoyed you and we'll sort it. He stopped and , in the 24 years we have been together, it has never happened again. As you say Op you should have stopped it when it first started

Silent treatment is a form of abuse. If she does this to you and your kids she’s being abusive to you all. If she does it to you in front of your kids, they’re witnessing abuse.

It’s fine to say you need some time out/space, e.g. to avoid or recover from an argument. A reasonable thing to do is set a time limit, e.g. ‘I’d like a couple of hours to myself today, but will talk to you this evening/tomorrow’.

If someone avoids communication without setting a clear end time, it’s a form of control and abuse, used as punishment, because it means the other person is left bewildered and unable to resolve problems.

It’s very unhealthy for your kids to witness this behaviour. It’ll make them distressed, even if they don’t show it. Kids learn behaviour from their parents, so they may end up doing it themselves. That’s what may have happened with your wife - she may have learned it from her family and think it’s OK.

You need to carve out time for a long talk away from the children. Either at home when they’re out or go out for a walk. Talking while walking can make things less confrontational and stressful. Let her know she may not realise but her behaviour is abusive and must stop immediately. If she needs space, she must set a time limit. She needs to be mature and look to find solutions to disagreements. Let her know this is your boundary and you’ll no longer tolerate this behaviour. Suggest she seeks therapy to consider healthy ways to deal with conflict.

If she won’t, it’s difficult because if you split and the kids spend time with her, she’ll likely do it to them, which will be very damaging.

It may help to understand that this almost certainly comes from her childhood, where she would have felt unsafe voicing any discontent. Passive protest becomes the only way such people feel they can express unhappiness. It's incredibly self sabotaging for the person rook g it as well as beyond frustrating and sometimes abusive for those on the receiving end.

That's not an excuse for her behaviour, but if you're looking to fix things rather than separate, understanding it's about her maladaptive coping responses rather than you personally can help take the personal sting out of it enough to have the patience to work through it with her.

Ultimately though, she has to admit to this being an issue and be willing to address it or you're doomed.

Agree with others re manipulation. Google “Stonewalling”. It’s hard to digest and accept and sometimes accepting that you are being treated in an emotionally abusive manner is hard (especially as a man), but that is what the behaviour is. She needs to be willing to learn another way, as she cannot do this to the kids. If not, I would leave

Can you try calling her out? "Take no notice of XXX - she's off on one of her Silent Sulks again!' sort of thing? Keep on making fun of it, telling your children that she can't help herself, it's just that she can't cope with not having her own way, but she'll get over it if they ignore her...

Your poor children - what a dreadful atmosphere to waste their precious childhoods in.

This must be addressed for their sakes - put aside how you feel and simply tell her in words of one syllable that you are not prepared for your children to grow up in this evil atmosphere. She has two choices: either stop it or you will start divorce proceedings and will fight for sole custody on the grounds that she might do the same to them and inflict mental cruelty.

She sounds like she really lacks insight which is going to make change tricky as to change one first has to accept responsibility. I think a couples or individual therapist will have their work cut out with her but worth a try i suppose.

My mother did this to me as a kid and I am still dealing with the effects it had on me (I’m 47). If she won’t hear that it’s abusive behaviour, and make efforts to stop, I would urge you to leave and take the children with you.

Agree with those saying what about the children?

My mum used to do this to me (only me, mind you), from the age of about five, if I 'disobeyed' her. Every incident is engraved on my memory, yes, even the time I was five. It has scarred me completely and it will be happening to your children. Before you leave her (which I hope you will), tell her what a dreadful thing it is that she is doing and how it is abuse. And do try to get help for the kids.

Please don’t blame yourself. Silent treatment is a form of abuse and you are a victim. That’s not your fault.

When your wife snaps out of this period of it you need to sit her down and say you’re not tolerating it anymore. Either things change or you want to separate. It’s not fair on your children to live in such a toxic atmosphere and, like you say, it’s modelling terrible behaviour to them. It might be better all round for you to split up.

Please don’t give her silent treatment in return. It’s just sinking to her level, you’ll lose the moral high ground, and she’ll be able to say it’s fine for her to keep doing it as you’ve done it too. You’d lose all your cards. Better to talk and tell her how you feel.