Are you solving issues by giving your partner silent treatment?

Every relationship has its ups and downs. Just like any other relationship, there maybe disagreements in a marriage. Your partner might make you unhappy but your ability to resolve your disagreements constructively without destroying your relationship makes a difference. If the disagreement causes communication breakdown for a period of time, this can do more harm to your marriage than you can imagine. There are couples who sleep in anger, they do not talk to their partner for days, weeks or months after a disagreement, some also do not talk to the children during this period of time. After an argument, some people choose to ignore or to be silent and not talk to their partner. For some, its because they want their partner to see that they are angry, some say its a way of punishing their partner and some are generally people who struggle to forgive. While it is understandable and normal to get upset when someone wrongs you, it is not advisable to maintain anger for a long period of time. Let’s look at why giving your partner silent treatment is not a good way to solve marriage problems.

Companionship

Everyone has a desire to have companionship. When you are in a romantic relationship, your partner fulfills this need. Your partner is a person you want to share your feelings, achievements and have companionship with continuously. This is a basic need and if it is not met a person does not function very well. This means that when you maintain your anger and give your partner silent treatment you might drive them to meet these needs somewhere else. Silent treatment in a relationship causes what we call ‘accidental infidelity’ where one had not planned it but it just happened due to circumstances. Some extra marital affairs started during the silent treatment time. You were both not talking and he/she went out and found another shoulder to lean on or someone who was willing to listen and an extra marital affair started accidentally. This is why silent treatment and prolonged anger is never a good idea.

Spill over effect

Prolonged silent treatment tends to spill over to other people who are close to you. It is very difficult to maintain genuine love with your children or other people living in the home with you while you are angry inside. Your children deserve constant genuine love and if you maintain silence, you will not be able to show it to the fullest because your silence is driven by anger. Why should your children live in a tense environment without love, joy and laughter?

Adding problems to yourself

Not speaking to someone for a longer period of time causes you to have bitterness. This bitterness is not good for you and your health. This is sometimes the cause of stress related diseases. Maintaining silence for a longer time means that you are not releasing the bitterness inside you which will continue to eat you up. This is why some people end up with constant headaches, high blood pressure, depression etc. Why would you want to multiply problems for yourself? The long period of silence obviously indicate that there is a problem in your marriage. Why don’t you choose to deal with one problem which caused you to be angry than to keep anger inside you and multiply your problems?

You might block effective communication in future

Some people give silent treatment and prolong their anger to the extent that their partners are afraid to address their concern. The next time their partner wants to correct, comment or address a concern they have to think twice because they are afraid that by doing this, it may cause a longer period of silent treatment again. Communication in a relationship is like water to a growing seed! If you plant a seed and you don’t water it, it will surely die. If communication in your marriage is broken, you will encounter more problems. Because both of you are not communicating, you are likely to make decisions individually and likely to fight again because the decisions were not made in agreement.

It’s the beginning of loss of affection

Just be careful that you will not end up destroying your marriage completely because of silent treatment. Some people started by silent treatment, it became a very long period of not talking to each other, then it progressed to sleeping in separate bedrooms and finally divorce came. Be careful and find constructive ways to solve problems in your marriage. Do not use another problem to solve another-it doesn’t work!

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