Did he withhold conversations? Did you? The Silent Treatment

[honeybearII]

When a person decides another person is the fault and cause of their misery, there is little you can say or do to change that view.

This is a wonderfully true statement, Corn.  It is a lesson learned when you have dealt with an N for many years.  Once someone is entrenched in their belief that we are the root of all their troubles, it really doesn't make much sense to try to change their view.  It is why sending letters and having conversations with the N is spitting in the wind.  They don't hear our side because they don't WANT to hear our side.

I think it is very sad when families cannot agree to disagree and then just get on with living and loving.  My daughters are having some kind of estrangement that I don't understand, but I have told both of them that they need to just let it all go and pick up from here and move on.  What good does it do to harbor resentments and nurture "slights" for months and years?  Life is too short, and families need each other.  I cannot MAKE them forgive each other, but I make it plain that this is THEIR problem and it is time to let bygones be bygones. 

Honey

[CZBZ]

"Silence kills relationships.  Familial relationship has little to do with it in my book anymore." ~Cornfield

I was one of those women who didn't know how to Confront. My tendency to withdraw was, at times, a healthy reaction. At other times, it was extremely dysfunctional because i was waiting, waiting, waiting for angry feelings to resolve. That meant my feelings were controlling ME. Of course, those feelings dissipated after awhile, but the initial problem was never handled directly. That means, the problem was still there---waiting to be resumed by a similar experience.

It's never easy to confront or even know how to confront if we didn't learn this skill as children. If we were 'silenced' as children, we'll have trouble learning how to speak up for ourselves, or confront other people even if we're wrong! There's no chance for long-lasting resolution if we aren't honest about our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. If a relationship is important to us, we'll have to Grow Up and get over our widdle feewings being hurt because the truth is (if my life is typical): even people who love us dearly will hurt our feelings now and then. OUR JOB is to tell them and then work through the issues so we build reciprocal trust in the relationship. Each time we're able to work through a problem with someone, we learn to trust them AND ourselves. We know they'll be there for us even when it's difficult because having relationship with us is worth the trouble. The more I practice direct confrontation, the more trust I earn for myself, too.

Direct confrontation (speaking up) has been challenging since i grew up in a home where children were to be seen and not heard. I probably went to the other extreme and made sure my kids were 'heard' even when they should have been silenced. hahaha...j'est kiddin'...but it is funny how we REACT in extremes when we parent our kids and make sure they GOT what we WANTED and didn't GET.

One of the biggest attractors for me with a narcissistic partner, was his willingness to listen and talk through arguments. I thought that was GRAND and VALIDATING until I started noticing that whenever we talked, I ended up changing my mind and putting his needs ahead of my own. I was clueless about 'silver tongued' people since my family used The Silent Treatment to break each other down. Even though most of us resist hearing how we 'teach other people how to treat us', I'll cop to doing exactly that.

If manipulation works, the person who uses manipulation to get what he-or-she wants, will continue using manipulative tactics UNTIL THEY NO LONGER WORK.

That's WHY I'm so earnest about providing information to people AND, it's another reason why I'm dedicated to honest confrontation. If someone is not invested in the relationship, they'll leave. The people who do care and who are invested in our friendship, will stick it out until the problem's mutually resolved. It's a surefire method to eliminate fair-weather-friends from the kind every girl needs to have in today's bad weather. Friends are easy to find when the sun's shining---but give me a friend who'll don her raincoat and galoshes WITH ME and my abandonment/rejection fears begin to heal.

Great thread! I've had a lot of thoughts come to mind while reading everyone's comments. Thank you!

Hugs,
CZ

[NewWings4MeNow]

Hi Honey,

Sorry I'm chiming in to this so late, but here are my two cents:

It was in the last year of my marriage to XNH, after he'd started spending time with his "special male friend," after he'd already announced to me during his family's visit that he wanted a trial separation, and when he'd started his consulting business, with partners, in half of the rooms of our house, that I realized something that slapped me in the face:  He was treating me like I was IRRELEVANT in his life, quite a turnabout from "before".

That morphed into him spending every night of the week upstairs in our home office *supposedly* job-searching (before the consulting group) until midnight.  And I stayed alone in our room downstairs watching TV all night.  No talk.  No interaction.  "We" slowly (or perhaps not so slowly) died.  He wanted separateness:  He took several holidays with "special male friend" that year and told me, a mother of a four year old, to go off with my gfs (all of whom had multiple young kids at home and Hs who traveled) on vacations -- not realistic at all.

Yes, at the end all we had was silence.  And since he told me that he and "special male friend" had been discussing our marriage for an entire year, he'd clearly sought his "supply" elsewhere. 

Silence kills relationships.  Then when he wanted excessive supply and communication after the split and D, I'm the one who kept the silence in place so he couldn't damage me further.  By necessity. 

The feeling of being irrelevant in my own home was quite overpowering and severely damaging to my self-esteem, about which he actually blamed me for him having to be responsible to all the time -- when he was the one responsible for destroying it before his family jumped on the bandwagon.

And I also noticed, at that time, that XNH's vocabulary was changing and he was using the word "irrelevant" in conversations where he defined others' realities and increasingly stated absolutes.

This experience is one of the reasons I'm so vigilent with d to teach her about self-worth, a girl's value, the importance of Voice etc.