'Silent treatment': The deadly scourge eating up marriages

A couple in distress

Duncan Muema* fell in love with a girl he met in college seven years ago. She was the very epitome of what young people would call a girl with "good vibes." She was agreeable to most of his proposals for their future life together, and fights were rare.

“Maria had all the qualities a man would look for in a wife,” says Muema.

However, two years into the marriage, Muema began to notice what he describes as a sense of entitlement in his wife. “She started demanding some finer things in life that we couldn’t afford, like holidays in expensive locations in Kenya, while all we could afford was the occasional holiday at the coast,” he explains.

Maria would push, calling him stingy. He would push back, accusing her of being a gold digger. Unable to get her way, Maria resorted to a strategy many couples fall back on—the silent treatment. A question would elicit a one-word answer, and if more explanation was required, it was an “I don’t know.” The couple would have celebrated their fifth anniversary this year. They did not.

Silent Treatment: A Relationship Scourge

Silent treatment is at the heart of many family squabbles and eventual breakups. According to the Cleveland Clinic, silent treatment is “an act of withholding communication, a common stonewalling behaviour that can be intentional or unintentional. For some people, it’s a coping mechanism. For others, it’s a way of causing harm.”

But why do people who were once open with each other retreat into the silent treatment corner? While everyone may have personal reasons for either dishing out or receiving the silent treatment, there is a common denominator.

“People use the silent treatment as an easy way of expressing their anger or hurt, hoping the other person will pay attention and [perhaps] act,” says Mary Achieng, a Nairobi resident. “It’s the result of annoyance when someone feels they don’t want to talk to their spouse. A woman, for example, may need time to overcome whatever it is her partner did to her, and the silent treatment may just be a ploy to solicit an apology.”

Granted, family life experts acknowledge that a man or woman may occasionally need time out to "cool off" after an argument and reflect on the best course of action, one that does not escalate the issue. It could be a brisk walk around the neighbourhood or engaging in a distracting activity. That is silence, not the silent treatment, they say.

Unfortunately, the silent treatment is not meant to amicably resolve an issue, with two out of three couples resorting to the practice when cornered.

“Sadly, some women are very manipulative, so they use it as a form of punishment or power play,” says Andrea Sila, a woman who admits to using the tactic to get her way in a relationship. If the cold shoulder mentality is not handled well, she says, it can lead to undesirable consequences.

“Prolonged silent treatment can be a form of emotional abuse on either party. One person may become tired of addressing the same issues, especially if they’re repeated offences from the other person. But the bottom line is, the silent treatment does not help. It doesn’t give the other person a fair chance to be heard or understood,” says Sila.

The website Jw.org warns that “when it is used as a means to retaliate or manipulate, the silent treatment not only prolongs conflict but also erodes the respect the couple has for each other.” It adds that while not talking may “quench your thirst for retaliation or compel your spouse to give in to your wishes, couples must recognize it for what it is—a tactic that, at best, works only short-term.”

The Root Causes of Silent Treatment

Cheryl Mwangi, a counselling psychologist with KidsAlive Kenya, says the silent treatment as a “conflict resolution mechanism” requires skill, like any endeavour in life.

“A skill doesn’t need to be positive. If a spouse gets what they want, regardless of how long it takes, then the person feels the tactic has worked. If your style of dealing with a crisis is avoidance, you hope the other person will get it. You might find someone has been communicating their needs, but these were not met, and they shut down. Men especially fail to read between the lines,” says Mwangi.

Mwangi suggests that the behaviour could stem from untreated childhood trauma, where a person carries on a family trend from years back.

For example, she says girls were taught to be homemakers but may never have been trained on how to deal with a husband, while a boy may never have learned how to be a husband beyond taking the girl home and trying to provide for her materially.

Such a couple, she adds, needs to identify areas in their past that were not navigated as they should have been.

“Whatever we deal with stems from our original environments, our homes, the ‘monkey see, monkey do’ inclination. Even former family relations have contributed to episodes of the silent treatment. For example, a firstborn is expected to be more responsible than the younger siblings; a girl raised by a single mother may have challenges submitting to a man; a last-born may exhibit tantrums,” says Mwangi.

She even suggests that a family history of mental illness could contribute to this peculiar habit later in life.

“All couples are different, and I think they ought to go for a mental assessment test before committing to a lasting relationship. If there is a case of bipolar disorder in the family, it can affect a person’s behaviour in the future. These are things people never talk about when dating,” she says.

Consequences of Silent Treatment

Whatever the causes or reasons behind the silent treatment, the results are the same, according to the blog Relationships Australia: “loss of connection, love, intimacy, and sometimes even family participation. It can also feel unfair and unkind, leading to anger and further fighting.”