The trouble with silent treatment

It saddens me to hear of how many couples resort to the silent treatment after there has been an altercation or quarrel.  Be it for reasons of punishment, control or simply because of clamming up due to a lack of communication skills to adequately express ones feelings, it is never the answer, and in most cases, just makes the problem worse. What I've learnt is that silent treatment only magnifies the problem, causing a greater rift or wall in the relationship.  What the silence does is to force one to have to presume and interpret things falsely.  Ignoring someone is as powerful and damaging as emotional abuse. 

Although I do believe it is healthy to give each other some space to process any negative emotions, there needs to come a point where you sit down and discuss what happened and allow each other to express themselves openly and honestly, without pointing fingers or placing blame. When one sticks to 'I' language instead of 'you', then this allows each other to view the problem from the other persons perspective.  If your emotions are too raw or sensitive, then the best solution is to write the person a letter. Bottling our emotions up, especially negative ones, is extremely unhealthy, not only for your spirit, but I believe it causes illness and disease to take root in our physical bodies as well. 

Unfortunately as is often the case, when the one spouse or partner becomes silent and abrupt, it often causes the victim to do tit for tat.  This dysfunctional cycle continues until some crisis forces them to communicate or God forbid, the bitterness and resentfulness is allowed to grow to such an extent where the relationship becomes terminal.

The other side of the coin, which is just as dysfunctional, is when couples act as if nothing happened after a fight, bottling up whatever negative feelings they had, hoping for them to dissolve, which they never do - they just become volcanic weapons we hold onto in our hearts for the next fight.  Communication is the key to a healthy and happy marriage! Only when we force ourselves to be vulnerable enough to express our feelings honestly, can we break the pattern of silent destruction. It is only with the truth that we are set free from fear, where the healing in our relationship can begin...