BPDFamily.com

I am new to this whole online help thing, so bare with me. I have been married for over 15 years and a stay at home mother, I have 4 children that mean the world to the both of us, well atleast to me. Since the beginning of our marriage, any problem or situation we had my husband always resorted in the silent treatment. If I did something he did not like or whatever the reason it would put him in silent mode for months at a time, and when I would fight back to get something out of him, it would make me look like I was a crazy woman, cause i was so frustrated and was getting nothing out of him. Over the past 5 years however, when he goes into silent mode, he stops being a father, he stops everything, even to if I needed something done to my car or needed money to go grocery shopping, I have to wait until he is ready. The whole world stops when he goes into silent mode. Now I have learned to ignore him as well when he has these moments, I go on about my business with the kids, I take care of the household chores, cook, clean, run errands, I mean he goes as far as asking one of the kids to go out of their way to grab something that is near me at the dinner table. Not even a Hello, nothing, total silence. I will say things to him as if he was not in "silent mode" but I would never get a response, its just a way for me to say hey look, I am not playing this game, we have a life to live and kids to take care of,I am choosing to be the better one here, yet he stays quite not a peep. Now that I have been able to not fight back and just keep doing what it is I do wether he is silent or not, it seems to make him go longer. I just don't know what to do anymore as he has stopped giving me money to buy groceries, I have brought a family member before to get involved to snap him out of it, and it did for a month, then it went right back to the silent mode. I am contemplating a divorce, because this is getting out of hand. Thoughts advice, please anything will help.

I'm so very sorry to hear this. I'm getting the silent treatment as well at the moment, but usually once my upwBPDh has calmed down over night he becomes better regulated. I can't imagine the loneliness you're feeling, but I hope this community is a comfort to you. If you consider getting divorced, there seems to be a lot of good support for that here too.

Hang in there, for yourself, and I really applaud your dedication to making your kids a priority.

I too just want to chime in and say how sorry I am that you are going through this. No one deserve to be treated that way. Especially for such long periods of time. Even though you realize that it's his issue, and that he lacks some emotional maturity(obviously), it's still hard to live with those extreme living conditions.

Lots of us deal with silent treatment, but I've never lived with it for long periods. I hope some members can give you some advice on how best to deal with that. It sounds like you've done things that "should" have helped, such as keep living your life, keep trying to communicate with him in a normal manner, but it just sounds like he's really rooted in this behavior.

I'm in personal therapy and it's really helped me, and gives me someone grounded in reality to share all the craziness that goes along with living with someone who has a PD. Plus, I get to work on my own issues, like anxiety, and just be ME. It's nice having someone that I don't have to tiptoe around, and someone that actually does know how hard I've tried, and she helps me weight what I want, it's somewhere that's about me.

Keep coming here, and take a look at the tools on the right. Welcome!

I'm short on time today, but will relay that I've been enduring ST for about 18 months now.  My solution; a good T, engage fully with kids, self care (the last one is hard, but T insists... .).