Is the Silent Treatment Abuse? How to Tell (and Respond)

The silent treatment is emotional abuse when it's used, repeatedly, to punish or control you: days of being frozen out until you apologize, silence as a weapon, silence that makes you afraid to bring things up. It isn't abuse when an overwhelmed partner needs to stop talking for a while, says so, and comes back to finish the conversation. Same quiet, very different meaning. The way to tell them apart is to look at what the silence is for and how it ends.

Below: six questions that sort one from the other, why being ignored hurts as much as it does, what to say when it's happening, and what to do if your answers point toward abuse.

Six questions to tell a break from punishment

Answer these about the pattern, not one bad night. Anyone can handle a single fight badly.

1. Was it announced? "I need some time, can we talk tonight?" is a break. Walking past you like you're furniture is not.
2. How long does it last? A real cool-down takes minutes to hours. Punitive silence often runs for days.
3. How does it end? A break ends with the person coming back to the issue. Punishment ends when you apologize, give in, or beg, often for something you're not sure you did.
4. What happens to the topic? After a break, you talk about it. After the silent treatment, the issue disappears and you learn not to raise it again.
5. Is it targeted? Watch whether they're chatty with everyone else, warm with the kids, joking with friends on the phone, and silent only with you. That's a message, not a meltdown.
6. How do you feel before you bring something up? Some nerves are normal. Dread, rehearsing, walking on eggshells, choosing not to mention things to avoid the freeze: that's what control feels like from the inside.

If your answers mostly land on the first half of each line, you're probably dealing with someone who shuts down when they're overwhelmed. That's frustrating and fixable, and stonewalling explains what's going on in their body. If they mostly land on the second half, keep reading.

When is the silent treatment abuse?

The National Domestic Violence Hotline defines emotional abuse as "non-physical behaviors that are meant to control, isolate, or frighten you," and it lists a partner who "punishes you by withholding attention or affection" among the warning signs.

The key words are meant to and punishes. The silent treatment crosses the line when:

• It's a repeated pattern, not a one-off
• It's used to get something: an apology, compliance, you dropping an issue
• It's paired with other control, like monitoring, put-downs, jealousy about friends, or threats to leave
• You've changed your behavior to avoid it, and you feel smaller for it

Abuse is about power, and silence can be a very effective way to hold it. As psychologist Kipling Williams of Purdue University, one of the leading researchers on ostracism, put it in a 2005 Purdue release, tactics like the silent treatment are widespread for two reasons: "First, they're powerful. And second, you can get away with them." There are no bruises and nothing to point to.

Why the silent treatment hurts so much

If you've ever been frozen out by someone you love and felt almost physically sick, you're not overreacting. In a 2003 brain-imaging study in Science, Eisenberger, Lieberman and Williams found that being excluded activated the anterior cingulate cortex, a region also involved in registering physical pain.

In a review in Current Directions in Psychological Science, Williams and Steve Nida describe ostracism as attacking four basic needs at once: belonging, self-esteem, control, and the sense that you matter. The first sting is fast and close to universal. In lab experiments, people feel it even when the ones ignoring them are strangers, or cartoon figures in a computer game.

They also describe what happens when it goes on: people first try to win their way back in, often by becoming more compliant, and after long stretches they can slide toward resignation, feeling helpless and depressed. That's part of why chronic silent treatment works as control. It trains the other person to give in faster.

Silent treatment vs. taking space

Taking space is a pause with a plan. It sounds like:

I'm too worked up to talk well right now. Can we come back to this after dinner?

Williams' own suggested alternative to the silent treatment is almost exactly that: "I can't talk to you right now, but we will talk tomorrow."

The difference isn't the amount of quiet. It's that the other person knows what's happening, knows it will end, and isn't being punished in the meantime. If you want words for asking for space yourself, see how to ask for space.

How to respond to the silent treatment in a relationship

Leave the door open, once

Send or say one calm message that names what's happening without attacking, and makes it clear you're available.

I can tell you're not ready to talk. I'm here when you are.

I'd like to understand what upset you. Can we talk tonight or tomorrow?

I'm going to give you some space. Let me know when you want to pick this back up.

Then stop chasing

This is the hard part. Repeated texts, apologies for things you didn't do, following them around the house: it all tends to feed the pattern, because the silence gets exactly the reaction it was looking for. Research on the demand-withdraw pattern shows how pushing and pulling away lock each other in place. A 2014 meta-analysis of 74 studies by Paul Schrodt and colleagues linked that loop to lower satisfaction and less intimacy, and found couples get stuck partly because "they each see the other as the cause."

Get on with your evening. Call a friend. You're not punishing back; you're declining to beg.

Name the pattern later, when it's over

When we disagree, you sometimes stop talking to me for a couple of days. I feel shut out and anxious when that happens. Can we agree that either of us can take a break, but we say so and come back within a day?

That's a reasonable request. How your partner reacts to it tells you a lot.

How to respond to the silent treatment from your husband

Everything above applies, with one addition. If your husband goes quiet mostly when he's overwhelmed (he gets flat, leaves, comes back hours later a bit sheepish), the most useful thing you can do is make breaks official. Agree on a phrase that means "I need 30 minutes," and agree that he's the one who comes back to restart. Lots of men who shut down are relieved to be handed a legitimate exit.

If his silence is longer, colder and ends only when you apologize, you're dealing with the second half of those six questions, not the first. Don't keep apologizing to make it stop. And don't spend energy diagnosing him; focus on what's happening to you.

What doesn't work

• Silence back. Two people waiting each other out just turns it into a contest.
• Pleading or over-apologizing. It teaches that silence works.
• Going through friends or family to get a reaction. It widens the fight.
• Exploding to force a response. Understandable. Also gives them a reason to stay silent.

If it's abuse

If the silent treatment is part of a wider pattern of control, or you feel afraid, couples counseling or mediation is not the right tool. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is direct about this: "Abuse is not a relationship problem," and they don't encourage anyone in an abusive relationship to seek counseling with their partner, partly because what you say there can be used against you later.

Instead, talk to someone who specializes in this. You can call the Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. They're there to help you think it through, not to tell you what to do. If you're having thoughts of hurting yourself, call or text 988.

If you're the one who goes silent

You can stop without having to suddenly become a great talker. Replace the freeze with one sentence: "I need some time, I'll come back to this by tonight." Then keep the promise. That alone turns a freeze-out into a break.

What to do next

Pick the line you'll use the next time the silence starts, and use it once. Then watch what happens over the next day. A partner who was overwhelmed will usually come back. A pattern that never comes back, that only ends when you give in, deserves a closer look, and possibly a call to someone outside the relationship. Either way, how sensitive you are isn't the question. What's happening between you is.