Silence treatment in a relationship

[3sausagedogs]

Help… Whenever my boyfriend gets cross with me he ignores me. Sometimes he just ignores me for ages, this time it’s been 2 days. We messaged about plans over the weekend and for some reason he’s obviously got angry because he’s not replying, I’ve asked him what’s happening and asked him to communicate with me and he is just giving me the silent treatment? Does anyone else have this and how long does it last? Is he ending things? It’s horrible getting the silent treatment

Get rid and find can adult to go.out with.

People tend to say it alot on Mumsnet, LTB. But this is one of the situations where it is highly revelant.
The silent treatment is a huge red flag of the suffering you can avoid if you get away and stay away from emotionally immature men / people who do this to you.
Why would you want to be with someone who actually enjoys controlling you by your feelings, by making you feel bad? This is horrible!
For your own sake, have faith in the advice of the many many here who are warning you.
The sooner you cut him out of your life the better for you.

Get rid or this will go on for the rest of your life. Punishing someone with silence is cruel.

When me and OH were first serious we made a promise to each other that the silent treatment was something we'd never do and we've stuck to it.

Why are tolerating his abuse of you?

Is this what you want for yourself, for your future.

Stop trying to figure him out and focus on yourself.

You have a tough life ahead of you if you think this is all you deserve......abuse that is.

Go out. See some friends, go the cinema by yourself, but do not hang around waiting for him to call, letting him dictate your life from afar.
You say you don't even know if or how you have upset him.
I'm here to tell you that the reason he hasn't contacted you is because he is doing something else that maybe he doesn't want to have to explain. That could be going on a bender with unsavoury mates, it could be seeing someone else, whatever it is it doesn't excuse him from replying to say he's backing out of whatever arrangements you'd made.
Best case scenario is he doesn't really care whether you are upset or not. Worst case is that he's doing it deliberately as a form of control. Either way, he's not a good bet, and therefore I say dump him. You don't even need to do anything, just block him.If you want to be civil, you could just text and tell him it' s no longer working for you, so goodbye.Then block him.

Why on earth haven't you dumped him yet?

WHY ARE YOU PUTTING UP WITH HIS SHIT AND NOT DUMPING HIS ABUSIVE ARSE?

I have had one of these - it is soul destroying and I promise it will not change.

If challenged on it he would say 'well you weren't talking to me either'...well, yes, how do you communicate with someone who won't reply or avoids you in the same house? When things were good, I'd bring it up and he'd agree to not do it again but the next perceived slight and he'd be right back at it and I'd be banging my head against the wall and crying resolving to never upset him again to avoid this on-edge, never knowing where you were feeling.

The perceived slights could be anything - had 3 glasses of wine and talked 10% louder than normal in the pub, got invited on a camping trip, bought a different phone to the one he recommended, interrupted him to leave the room to check a pan wasn't boiling over, said it was a shame we hadn't gone out over the weekend, put a vase his mum had bought in the cupboard etc. Could be anything so you had to be prepared for everything.

But...I have to admit, I did it with my first boyfriend when I was teenager because I was too scared to say when they'd upset me and was too immature to realise I could leave him, rather than play stupid games. If you are genuinely repeatedly upsetting him enough that he has to routinely avoid you ( which I do not think is going on here!), then it should end anyway.

You have an anxious attachment style, OP. Google it.

Does anyone else have this and how long does it last

He'll do it repeatedly, and the pattern will last until you dump him. This is him. This is what he does. It's how he treats you, because he knows how it makes you feel. Why do you want to be with someone who likes to make you feel like this?

Might I suggest you start ignoring him back? And by that I mean block him on everything and move on with your life. Consider yourself single, go find a grown up to date.

This is abuse and your upset and anxiety is exactly what he wants out of it. He wants you to chase and grovel and plead. Don't. Let him have his little tantrum, but don't be there when he comes back this time.

What are you getting out of this relationship?.

The only acceptable level of abuse in a relationship is none.

Abuse is not about communication or a perceived lack of, it’s about power and control. He wants absolute over you.

Abuse is NOT a relationship issue.

He needs to become your ex bf because this is who he really is and he will not change.

This 100%
He's trying to teach you to stay in line. Fuck him off, there are much better people out there

OP, would you treat someone you loved like this? Or indeed anyone at all? So why do you think he cares about you, when he treats you like this?

Do you want to be with a person who doesn't care about you? If not, then dump him.

Life is much easier if you stop trying to work out other people and focus on what you want and do not want in your life.

Bin him, he's an abusive arsehole.

@3sausagedogs that's the thing here, he actually doesn't care about you or your feelings, just him and his own needs, because he would not treat you this way if he genuinely cared about you.
My exh was the same. I thought if I showed him enough love and gave him no reason to behave this way, he would change. I really thought I could change him. Consequently, I became a shell of my former self. Trying to make sure I did nothing to provoke a silence, trying to second guess every reaction, every mood and it didn't work. His record was 6 days and we were married and lived together at the time. It was toxic.
Then, he started to behave this way towards our lovely children... Enough! I was out of there. I actually began to despise him. (Our children are adults in their 30's now and he still treats them this way, consequently they are borderline no contact with him)

You have enough clues now to know this behaviour will only get worse and is all about his own insecurity and his ability to exercise power and control. You will never work out why he does this. Never. There is nothing you can do to change him, as his issue has actually got nothing to do with you and everything to do with himself. That's why you can't understand it/him. You never will. Please get out now while you can.

As an aside, I'll hazard a guess that he "love bombed" you in the beginning? Maybe he still does?

Take care of yourself

Long long time ago I had this from my husband. He would go silent on me for days. Leave the room when I walked in etc.

Solicitor told me it’s called “unreasonable behaviour” and at that time was later cited in my divorce.

Good job you’re not married because it sucks.
Get out now OP. They know what they’re doing at it’s soul destroying.

Just ignore him..decide you are having nothing more to do with him. He might come running after you. Your choice then to give him another chance or end it. He is probably not worth keeping but some men believe treat em mean keep em keen is the way to go. They can sometimes learn that is not the way to have a loving equal relationship.

My husband used to do this to me but I started to ignore it and pretend he wasn’t ignoring me. It stops having the desired effect that way.

If you stay with him, you are in for a life of misery.

Leave him, he won't change, he is cruel and abusive

Sulking and silent treatment is so unattractive. You should have gone out with friends, not be sitting there in desperation over a churlish fool. Honestly, raise your bar. If you metaphorically walk around with 'Victim' on your forehead these silly disrespectful type of men will make a beeline for you and have you making yourself ill over their utter nonsense.

Right please listen to me. I've just come out of an 8 year relationship putting up with this shit.

Firstly I'm glad you said boyfriend. Please don't marry him.

As others have said, it is a form of emotional abuse and it's horrible.

It's a cycle that you don't realise you are in. What you will end up finding is that you will spend your life walking on egg shells tip toeing around this man in order to keep him happy. It will literally take over your life and it's mentally and physically exhausting. You will forget about yourself. As long as he is happy then so are you. If he's miserable, so are you.

If you try stand up for yourself, it won't work. He won't see it your way. If I got an apology would be something along the lines of 'sorry if I upset you but just forget it, you don't get it'. It was never sincere.

You will find that he falls out with you over the most ridiculous things. Of course you are trying so hard to never annoy him so nothing he actually falls out with you about will be anything major. You won't be able to get your head around it because the things he falls out with you about or so petty.

This is a big one - you will be relieved when he starts speaking to you again because the torture of the silent treatment is over. That's all I cared about. I knew what he had done was wrong but it didn't matter. He was speaking to me again. And i must try harder in future to never let that happen again. That was my thought process.

You will probably end up finding that you do everything he wants and asks of you. You will be scared to upset him. It's all about control op. Right now he's pushing you to see what he can get away with. To train you up to be his emotional punch bag.

My exh used to tell me it's how he deals with things. The silent treatment. He would rather not speak that argue. It didn't matter how much I told him that it made me feel uneasy and really quite scared of him. He continued to do it over and over again. It took 7 years when I actually started to not care about it. I would always try and get him to speak to me during the silent treatment and resolve the issue. Once I started to withdraw, he couldn't understand it. He is a total narcissist.

Please be wary of all this op. It really isn't fun. Don't spend your life walking on egg shells trying to please someone who really doesn't care or deserve you x

It absolutely is a punishment and it's also abuse. My ex went a whole week sometimes not speaking to me and we lived in the same house. Id just get him passive aggressively talking to me through the kids. Please don't put up with this. X

My STBX use to do this to me when I stepped out of line. Sometimes it would last over a week. Only talking to me if he needed to and then back to silence. It was horrible. And you find yourself avoiding conflict/walking on eggshells to stop it happening again. But it does, something you do or say will trigger it.
Please block him and never see him again, it will just get worse.

Silent treatment is unacceptable.
Go No contact.

an ex tried the silent treatment on me so I went no contact- 9 months later he called me and asked why I didn’t chase him or apologize for something I did not know that I supposedly did.

keep it moving

My ex did this. It destroyed me over the years.

It would force me to be the bad person. Because after so many days of not being spoken to, it made me very cross and I would start saying nasty things.

fortunately my divorce to him came in last week .

My advice is nip it in the bud right now. If you can’t, then leave