Oh, I know this one well. This is one of the most painful and confusing dynamics that shows up in my office, and I want to speak to both sides of it, because both sides make sense.
So here’s what’s usually happening underneath the silent treatment. The person going quiet, they’re not being cruel. They’re not playing games. What’s happened is they’ve hit a wall inside themselves. The pain of the disconnection, the fear that they’re not being loved the way they need to be loved, it’s gotten so overwhelming that they’ve shut the door. Going silent is a form of protest. It’s actually saying, “I am so scared right now that I cannot speak.”
You sit in the silence wondering what you did wrong.
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But here’s the brutal irony. The person on the receiving end of that silence? They’re hearing something completely different. They’re hearing, “Figure it out. You should already know. You failed.” And that lands like a knife. Because most people, especially men, move through the world using logic and direct communication. If there’s a problem, you name it, you deal with it, you move forward. So when silence is the response, it genuinely doesn’t compute. And then they’re being held to a standard of emotional intuition they were never told they needed to have. That’s not fair. And I’ll say it plainly, it’s not fair.
But here’s where I want to push a little, because this is where it gets interesting. Both of you are hurting in that moment. The one going quiet is terrified. The one being shut out is terrified. You’re two scared people who love each other, and you’ve both picked the worst possible response to that fear. One of you shuts down, one of you pushes for answers or goes into hyper-rational mode, and you just keep making it worse for each other.
What I’d want to do with you both is get you to see the dynamic from the outside, because when you’re inside it, it feels like an attack and a wall. But when you zoom out, it’s just two people desperately scared that the connection is breaking.
The silent treatment doesn’t get broken by demanding an explanation. It gets broken when the person receiving the silence can say something like, “I can see you’re really hurting right now. I don’t fully understand it yet, but I want to. Take whatever time you need. I’m not going anywhere.”
You sit in the silence wondering what you did wrong.
Do you know you can get personalized answers to all your questions from the same wisdom that wrote this article, right now?
Ask anything about your own situation and get an answer immediately. Keep asking, think it through, work out what to do next.
No credit card required. Your first 10 messages are free.
Ask Figlet about what the silence means.
That’s hard. That goes against every instinct. But it’s the only thing that actually works.
And if you’re the one going silent, I want you to know that your partner cannot read what you cannot say. The silence feels like protection. But it’s actually keeping both of you stuck in that janitorial basement I always talk about, neither of you getting what you actually need, which is to feel safe and enough for each other.
The goal is to get you both into that middle apartment. Where you can say, “I’m scared,” instead of going quiet, and “I hear you,” instead of demanding logic. That’s where it starts.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: How to Stop Fighting and Start Communicating in Your Relationship
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