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 dad would do this to my mum. Weeks and weeks of it.

I’ve never forgot and my own relationships have definitely been affected by this and the general lack of affection they had.

I would be giving her the permanent silent treatment. Leave.

Your poor dc.Time to separate, she's abusive and it's costing you friends and family.

This treatment is a form of abuse, your wife is abusing you and has abused others int he past.

Id suggest you tell her the abuse stops or you separate, but only if you actually mean it.

Nobody should have to live being ignored

Hand her divorce papers.
No cure for her.

@Crownpaints If you want to leave and need help and advice on navigating that, there is nothing like the hive mind that is this forum.

Loads of Mnetters have been there, done that, got the beanie, the tee shirt and the scars so if you're serious, there's plenty of online hand holding along the way available on here. Money, courts, access, benefits, emotional blackmail, worming cats, browning gravy and mending garden gnomes. Experts on here en masse. Dive in.

Just sayin.

I've been out with some right munters in my time who didn't act nicely and usually moved on relatively swiftly. The one that sticks in my mind though for how nasty it felt was a guy who I was dating, who one night just stonewalled me. It was so weird and nasty, just wouldn't talk to me or acknowledge me. I remember thinking sod this and trying to get a taxi (can't remember if I could find one, or whether I ended up sleeping in a spare room before leaving). I ended things but for whatever reason, that silent treatment was the worst memory.

I personally think you should leave her.

I'm so sorry, OP. You deserve so much better. A partner is supposed to be a comfort, a rock, a support in tough times. If I were you, I would leave her.

Edited to add: my own natural tendency is to go quiet when I'm upset. I always make sure to give my partner lots of hugs and physical contact when I'm in a quiet mood, to make it clear I'm not trying to cut him out. In any case, the longest it's lasted is a day. Your wife's behaviour is abusive.

Does she give your children the silent treatment too? My Dad used to do this when I was a child and I can honestly say that feeling of being ignored still affects me to this day (now in my late 40s). Get this sorted one way or the other or your children- and their future relationships - will suffer!

Do it. My ex-H would do this - I call it sulking, because that is what it is, and is suggestive of a controlling personality wanting everything its way or no way. Eventually I reciprocated his 'sulk' and did not speak to him during his sulks and did not respond when he came out of it. We got divorced, though.

Would you be unreasonable to escalate an unhealthy situation that's already exposing your children to extremely negative behaviour by doing the same yourself? Yes.

You need to take healthy action, even if that's counselling or splitting up or removing yourself and the children to an emotionally safe space when the behaviour is occurring.

Its not acceptable to you or your kids.

If it's not possible to leave right now, can you start to make changes towards a time when you could leave and take the children?

Could you rearrange your day so you start to become the main caregiver - if you do separate then this is something you will have to do anyway, so make the adjustments now while you can sort your timings out. So you start to do school pick-ups/drop-offs, arrange to take them out at weekends "to give mum some space" etc. Sort your finances out so you have a clear picture of what you will need to contribute to the existing home and what you will have to start a new home. I think if you go for 50/50 childcare or higher you may not have to contribute much, other than your share of the existing mortgage/rent.

Just step-up for your kids as best you can to protect them from this.

But still try to talk to your wife, get her to see she is being abusive towards you and your kids. Do what you can to help her help herself, but have a back-up plan for the kids sake if she is not willing to engage.

This is awful, your poor kids. You need to either call it out every time or make plans to separate. Otherwise not only is it harming your kids emptionally, it’s teaching them that this is a normal and acceptable way to behave in a relationship.

Mirroring the abusive behaviour back is never a good approach, as tempting as it may feel. Keep the high ground.

My mother behaved like this. Strangely I blame my father more for not protecting us. I felt like she had a really challenging childhood and resulting mental health difficulties that at least offered an explanation for her poor coping and relationship strategies. He had no excuse other than he valued it being as easy as possible for him, irrespective of the impact on the children.

Yup. My cousins marriage is like this. The children have absolutely no idea how to manage even the most minor upset. You guys need to get to couple therapy asap

Have you discussed this with her when she's in a more reasonable frame of mind? And have you pointed out to her that this is why she loses friends? How does she react?

If you have and she won't accept it, then start making plans to leave.

Don't stoop to her level. It doesn't achieve anything. You'll both stop taking to each other and it'll become stubborn from both sides to the point where you'll forget what the issue was in the first place. She needs to work on her toxic traits, you can't change her.

It’s psychological abuse and my late mother used to do the same and so do some of my other family. It makes me enraged just thinking about it. Im currently NC with one member of my family who is giving me the silent treatment after I stood up for myself after being harassed by them for years. They want me to run back to them and beg them to speak to me again. It’s never going to happen because I am a person with feelings who deserves to be treated properly by everyone as I treat them. They try and make you feel like they’re more superior to you by withdrawing communication so you beg for scraps of their attention. Don’t play into her mind games. Basic respect isn’t a privilege that you earn, it’s a part of any healthy relationship.

Clearly losing people isn’t enough of a deterrent to make her change her ways so she’s completely unwilling to change this behaviour. You need to divorce her and she needs intensive therapy but that’s not your responsibility to ensure she gets it. Silent treatment or stonewalling is essentially a person punishing you for the fact that they’re emotionally incapable of being an adult and refusing to take and responsibility when they’re in the wrong/ told something they don’t like. Pathetic, abusive, weak and selfish behaviour from anyone who behaves in that manner. Don’t stand for it.

You need to stand up for yourself. Do you have children? Giving her the silent treatment back won’t do anything but make you as bad as her. Any attempt to call it toxic will be tossed back at you. And that’s exactly what you need to do.

”Jane. This behaviour is abusive and manipulative and I refuse to accept it any longer. I have lost friends and family because of this and I will not let it go on. I can no longer defend you to others when you behave this way and I certainly won’t be sharing my own life with a brick wall any longer. I am meeting with a lawyer to discuss divorce.”

She wants control. Take back yours.

Take your kids and leave. I have dealt with this treatment for 10 years of my life and the best thing I done was get out of it! It is so incredibly damaging.

It is part of domestic abuse. You have not enabled it. Your wife is an adult and is making a deliberate decision to do it. The fact that you feel partly responsible for your wife's behavior is another sign of domestic abuse.

My ex would do this to me, I didn’t even realise it was classed as abusive until fairly reason (ridiculous I know but I just thought it was ‘him’). It would upset and confuse me but then I started to get really pissed off and I’d say to him, “oh you’re not speaking to me then, that's good I’ll enjoy the silence”. And then I’d just get on with my day as if he didn't exist.

My son recently had the sense to split from his long term gf because she was displaying this behaviour. I am so thankful he saw it was something he wouldn’t tolerate and ended it.

You really do need to give her a good talking to and give her ultimatums that you will no longer accept this behaviour.

Mine did it a couple of times. I explained it was abuse and I would leave if it happened again. I would have left as my first marriage was abusive.
He hasn't done it since.
You need to give her an ultimatum.

She knows exactly what she's doing and that she's the cause of broken relationships. She most likely expresses hurt just to test what you say. To test of you're still loyal to her or do you point out that it's all her fault.

She's upset that they no longer speak to her when that's exactly what she's decided to do to them?

She has set her own 'rules' for how she believes things should be and is sad that they are keeping to them?!

My late husband used to do this for the first 15 years of our marriage. He could keep it going for a fortnight or more while I was practically begging him to forgive me for whatever thing I was guilty of .
One day I’d had enough and gave him the same treatment. We were both on an early shift and got up about 5.30 am and he would drop me off at work at 6.45am before continuing to work himself .
Normally I would ask him if he wanted coffee or toast and generally try to talk to him but this day I decided not to and totally ignored that he was even there .
He couldn’t stand it and by the time he dropped me off at work he was chatting away.
For some reason it worked and for the next 20 years of our marriage he never gave me the silent treatment again .