Not talking after an argument

[Lolly36]

What would you say is the normal amount of time for someone to not talk to you after a minor argument?

I had a disagreement with DP on Wednesday and I've pretty much had silence since then, bar a couple of replies to some of my texts. We don't live together.

@Lolly36....I am so sorry to read this but so very glad he cycled quickly into abuse again to give you another insight to who he is. Of course you took him back, its normal for abusive relationships to do this. However, you are now having all your blinkers taken off and please, please.....get the hell away from him now and never, ever look back! You are beginning to get trauma bonded....escape now and dont go back again.

Please let that be the last time.

Block him, change the locks and don't let him back into your life.

This is the nasty nice cycle of abuse. The euphoria when things are good and you are forgiven, then depths of despair and pain when he punishes you again. Those strong emotions are addictive which is why it's so hard to end the relationship even when you know on a rational level it is abusive and toxic.

One day at a time Keep On Keeping On free of him

Hope you're ok OP. You must be gutted but honestly better to find out now than after you move in together. His loss

You should be angry OP. Very angry! Hopefully your anger will keep you from giving in. The further you get away from him physically and emotionally the more angry you will get at how he treated you. You will be angry with yourself for allowing it, but you shouldn’t. We’ve all been there. When you come through the anger and look back in hindsight you will see it was an insidious form of manipulation to get power and control over you. The gaslighting is almost impossible to fathom. It slowly alters your perspective and you lose sight of your own values. All I can say is the quicker you draw a line under this relationship and move forward, the quicker you will recover and get back to the person you were before you met him, before he played mind bending games and twisted you into someone you no longer recognise. Stay strong, stay busy. When you find your mind drifting back to him Stop it immediately and focus on something you need to get done. Don’t let him take up a minute more of your precious time. Your life belongs to you not him.

I just can't over the fact it's only been 3 days and he's done it again. I don't really know what to do with myself this morning.

Well, you tried. You gave him another chance. He's showed told you exactly what he is, and that he has no plans to change his behaviour. Believe him! I couldn't face the prospect of a life wiith someone like this. And if that isn't enough, imagine having kids with him, and having them learning this behaviour from him.

Grieve the end of the relationship, then pick yourself up and find someone actually worth your time.

I think you need to think about what you want. Do you want this to be your life. Treading on eggshells to try and keep him happy so you're not punished with silence?

If he cared about you he wouldn't do it l, or at least try to work on it. He has quite clearly told you to put up and shut up. You can do better than this. You deserve better.

You’ve been told how it’s going to be, now it’s your move.
Except you don’t have to make any moves at all, simply keep those doors shut against him.

Take control this morning op. Bag his stuff up, leave it on his doorstep, send him a text dumping him and then block him on everything.

I went round and round this sulking merry go round with my exdh. It took me years to get off, it's an awful way to live. He's trying to train you never to disagree with him, he even threatened you with the relationship last night to try and get you to toe the line. I wish I'd had mn when this happened to me.

The fact that he's done it again SO quickly shows that he really is trying to 'train' you to to accept it. If you take him back again then you are giving him the green light because he's made it so very clear that this is "who he is" and all that bollocks. He must think you're a fool OP

Oh and I agree. Tell him he either collects his belongings or you're leaving it in bags outside your door. Make clear this is not ok and that you have respect for yourself.

Every time he's done this previously it's due to him pointing out something he's done that I was unhappy with. Last night was simply a discussion on something relatively minor that we had different opinions on. It makes absolutely no sense, unless it really is as simple as the fact I just didn't agree with him!

His way or the highway is his MO.

Run for the hills.

This definitely is "part of the training" as someone called it above. By the end of my marriage I was accepting of some horrific behaviours from my ex husband - totally abusive things that no woman would normally accept from her husband, but I recognised through counselling that I was conditioned to accept them over a gradual period of time, because at least it stopped him ignoring me or shouting at me.

This isn't what you want for your life - the decision to end the relationship doesn't have to be his - it can be yours. That's your real power right there - refuse to accept it and dont let him talk you down.

@RandomMess

His way or the highway is his MO.

Run for the hills.

Sometimes, we don’t need to fully understand why someone does things, in order to understand it’s not good for us and we need to stay away. You can always work it out later if you must, for now, you have more important things to do.

My ex did this too, we discussed the silent treatment in marriage counselling and he acknowledged (or, seemed to) that it wasn't constructive.

2 days later he sulked again but "only" for a day.

When i confronted him, he said "well I could have chosen to not speak to you for a week".

This showed me without any doubt that:

• he knew exactly what he was doing

• he had total control over himself, it wasn't some kind of "emotionally overwhelming" reaction or retreat to his " man cave"

• it was definitely a "punishment" he felt I deserved

It's so hard to leave over something like this but his behaviour shows he sees no problem with this way of behaving (or possibly even feels it's justified by YOUR "behaviour".

Keep posting, it will help you keep a track of what's happening.

You make plans for your life that don't include a stroppy teenager...
Very liberating ime.

Just run. He basically is a controlling dickhead who is training you to never ever criticise or challenge him because if you do, you will be punished. Walk away now while you still can. Ice clearly has no intention of changing.

Sounds exactly like my ex. I totally know what someone said above like if someone else was around, he would be all sweetness and light and i would think oh thank christ for that he's snapped out of it. But as soon as they left, even if they just popped out of the room, the shutters came back down. I used to cry and cry, and wonder why the other person was worth speaking to nicely but i wasnt. 3 years i wasted on that piece of shit.

I waited and waited for him to end the relationship. In the end i did it (by text). He was initially very very very sorry then went through the cycle until he then gave me a great long list of all the (made up) things he didn't like about me. I didn't care by that point.

I realised he was never going to end it. I only realised why after discovering Mumsnet years later. Abusers don't want to put that much effort into grooming their victim only to break up with them. I'm glad you've seen his true colours.

@ShesMadeATwatOfMePam

he would be all sweetness and light and i would think oh thank christ for that he's snapped out of it. But as soon as they left, even if they just popped out of the room, the shutters came back down. I used to cry and cry, and wonder why the other person was worth speaking to nicely but i wasnt.

God yes this is horrific when you live with the person, your post brings it all back.

I wasted 20+ years on my ex.

It wasn't all bad but I see now the good times were part of the cycle.

It takes a long time to get over that feeling of worthlessness from the silent treatment.

I was also the recipient of a long list of things that were wrong with me or that he hated.

For example, the first night I spent with my new partner, I lay awake rigid all night scared to disturb him, as ex had said i was a nightmare to sleep with and even joked about getting single beds to get some peace from me.

New partner loves sleeping in the same bed as me and says I'm quiet as a mouse.

@jamaisjedors Thanks for your posts. It's interesting to see what happened when you challenged your ex. I challenged mine properly last night for the first time about his behaviour and he made it pretty clear it was a conscious decision to give me the silent treatment. I said that normal people don't behave this way. He said well I can go home now and be in a mood, or I can stay the night, then go home and be in a mood. It was at that point that I realised that he was choosing to behave this way.

I had a boyfriend like this - two years I put up with this shite. All milk and honey to begin with then these huffs became more frequent and lasted longer and longer. It’s a form of emotional abuse and coercive control. He’s doing this so you won’t challenge him or argue with him. It’s to keep you in your place and teach you a lesson in how to not upset him. The minute I realised that I got rid of him. This is something a lot of people with NPD do. I’m not saying he has it but regardless, he is making you unhappy. That’s enough to end the relationship. This will only get worse, never better. You cannot change him.

Just to add, sometimes it felt like was deliberately trying to goad my so he’d have the excuse to give me the silent treatment. It was like a victory for him and completely disorienting for me.

[quote Lolly36]@jamaisjedors Thanks for your posts. It's interesting to see what happened when you challenged your ex. I challenged mine properly last night for the first time about his behaviour and he made it pretty clear it was a conscious decision to give me the silent treatment. I said that normal people don't behave this way. He said well I can go home now and be in a mood, or I can stay the night, then go home and be in a mood. It was at that point that I realised that he was choosing to behave this way. [/quote]
And just to be clear, this is the first line of attack. When you wise up to the silent treatment and he realises it’s not going to work anymore he will pull out the next more effective weapon in his arsenal, and when that doesn’t work, the next. In my relationship, 25 years after the first week of silent treatment, when he’d exhausted all non-physical methods of control he threatened me with a knife. That’s when the police were involved and it ended. The silent treatment is just how it starts. Your DP is not interested in an equal, mutually respectful union. He wants to win. He wants you to know he is the one in control not you. No amount of ‘relationship talks’ will work for that reason. Please don’t waste anymore time trying to figure him out or mull over the ‘if only, I’d said this, he’d have understood’ or ‘I didn’t explain it properly, I’ll put it a different way’. You will tie yourself up in knots and I guarantee you it will make no difference.

For my DP and I it can go anywhere between 3-5 days or just a couple hours, depending on the argument.

I used to be one of those people that would get incredibly anxious if we stopped speaking after a fight but then realised it's much better to take a few days off. It gives me time to analyse the situation, focus on my part of the argument but also attempt to understand his and then come back with a solution for it.

Whenever I forced the conversation to keep going after an argument it just ended up being worse