When your wife won’t speak to you. How to handle the silent treatment. Transcript of Episode.

Intro: You ask, we answer. Welcome to Can This Marriage Be Saved, where we go against common relationship problems and help you determine if this relationship should stay or go.
Rivka: Welcome to another great episode. Today we are going to talk about what to do when your wife won’t talk to you, whether she’s giving you the silent treatment or you just have no idea what’s going on, but she is not responding to you. What can you do? So, Shlomo you’re the marriage counselor I’m your wife, take it away!
Shlomo: When your spouse is not talking to you or giving you the silent treatment, it can be extremely uncomfortable to say the least, and it’s always a question of what do I do? Do I reach out? Do I try to engage? Is it better just to give space? I think that you probably know your history in your relationship. How things have worked and normally what happens when a person is in the space where they don’t want to talk. So it could be they’re upset about something, they’re not feeling safe. There could be a lot of anger pent up, so, in the past, what have you done? Sometimes it’s better just to give a little space until things cool off. At the same time you’re trying to be friendly, trying to be nice but not expecting any kind of change in return. And then for others, you may need to actually pursue your spouse and try to engage and ask them what they need and ask if they want to talk.
Rivka: I’m just realizing that I think….
Shlomo: What I do with you?
Rivka: OK, I think you do that with me sometimes. I mean I really, really try to never get in this state because with all the work that we’ve done on our marriage over the last almost nineteen years. I know it’s not good to give someone the silent treatment when you’re angry, and it’s good to use your words and it’s good to communicate in a safe way. But, sometimes if I get extremely angry, I do know that in that moment, I do not want to talk to you and I know in the past that’s when you started to sort of pursue me like when you say, “Can I get you hot drink? Would you like a tea?” And then sometimes I just {laughing} you keep asking and then I sort of melt because I can’t resist a hot cup of tea when I’m feeling very emotional, very moody so I realize I’m laughing because in the advice you’re giving it’s kind of describing me.
Shlomo: Personal version, so it’s spoken from experience.
Rivka: But it works, I mean ….
Shlomo: I find that….. first of all to defend myself is not going to make it better. It’s going to make it worse so what I typically do is I kill it with kindness. Doing acts of service, being kind, being nice, doing things trying to go out of the way. To be helpful with the hope that at some point the mood will change and inevitably the mood does change. And at some point you realize that because usually people aren’t going to give you the silent treatment permanently.
Rivka: Hopefully not.
Shlomo: Hopefully not, though it does sometimes happen and once that’s the case then ultimately if you’re in that situation it’s important to be able to work on your relationship and learn how to be able to communicate better, because you don’t want to get to a place where there’s silent treatment. So, sometimes when I’m working with couples they’ll say, “You know since we began this process with you it used to be that we would have a fight and we wouldn’t speak for a week and now it’s like two hours so it’s progress.” So the idea is working on your relationship- being able to work through the issues, learn how to communicate more effectively so you feel heard and understood. Helps change the dynamics.