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The topic of Silent Treatment is brought up so often on this forum. So many of us have endured countless rounds, from days, to weeks, some of you months even years.

I feel this subject almost needs a sticky. But I've been quoted by a few people as nailing it (And if you feel this isnt dead on please say so)... .I can always update this OP.

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Silent Treatment... .Plain and simple, they disappear. In most cases, silent treatment is dished out to you, along with a timer.

The timer, understand... .You Control.   While you do not know the exact length the timer will run, you do control the unknown time at which it will or will not expire... .The moment silent treatment begins, the timer starts as well.

This timer, is a simple countdown. A countdown to when the person ignoring you, will actually reach back out and touch base.

Every single time you text. Every single time you call:

1.) You reset the timer back to where it was when the silent treatment began.

2.) Depending on your significant other, in all likelihood, you also add penalty time to the length the timer will run.

So if your goal is to talk to the person. As hard as it may be, as upset, hurt, crying, angry, whatever. If you want to minimize the pain- for you... .Do not reset the timer.

Trust me. Silent Treatment and "The Timer" go hand in hand, 99% of the time.

Reciprocating dysfunction doesn't seem like a positive goal if the desire is to reconnect rather than to detach or protect one's self.  What's the bottom line here?

I wouldn't classify begging to talk to someone as reciprocating dysfunction. I'd say many of us find ourselves, during periods when we are being given silent treatment, in the position of calling, texting, for days, weeks, trying to understand, to work things out, to talk to them.

I think therein is the dysfunction. We need to have self respect for ourselves. If someone doesnt return our call. We need to not call again. We deserve people in our lives who call back. Who don't do Silent Treatment.

My experience has told me time and time again, when I stop trying during times of silent treatment, that is when she would call.

So if someone here is experiencing that, silent treatment, and they want to make it work, perhaps not reciprocating, but letting their SO know they will not tolerate that behavior, that communication, both ways is expected.

Would you not agree that BPD people use silent treatment as punishment? And out of abandonment fears? If you stop chasing, they run back. In reality they need to learn to not act in such a way.

And if their goal is to truly detach. They should focus not on the silent treatment, but on going no contact themselves.

It's just a subject that is brought up time and time again here. I understand this is the detaching board.

But truthfully, and I'm sure you'd agree, many of us here are "in between" trying to save and trying to be free. As if our hearts have not yet caught up with what our brains know to be the right thing for us to do.

"They need to learn" but is it up to us to teach them?  Is it possible to teach them this in the midst of a dysfunctional r/s with all of the pain on both sides?  Or is it more,  "this is my boundary (value), and I'll stick to it. The ball is in your court."

You're also alluding to boundaries,  but boundaries are about us,  communicating our values, not controlling or teaching the other person.  That sounds to me more of a Parent-Child dynamic.  

Arent pwBPD in many ways living in a world of their own, with the emotional IQ of a child. And we in many ways, end up trying to be the rescuer? The one who wants to help?

If we want them in our lives, yes, we have to be the ones to teach them. No one else will. If we don't want them in our lives, we have to walk away.

I agree that the timer is a thing. I also agree that we can cause a reset.

The simple truth about silent treatment is that for whatever reason the non has upset the pwBPD. By continuing to contact them they cannot get over the upset. You constantly remind them of it.

I had a similar experience with my sons and their mum. They fell out and my boys didnt want anything more to do with her. I advised her to give them a cooling off time but she ignored this. She bombarded them with texts and fb messages and didnt allow the wounds to heal. The boys are even more adamant that they dont want anything to do with her.

I thought for a long time if you want to understand how a pwBPD thinks then look at childrens behaviour and this example adds more weight to that belief for me.

I am guilty of this so often. My ex loves silent treatment. My personality, I have always seeked to resolve. Right away. I understand cool down periods. Like, look- we are both upset, lets talk more tomorrow. But silent treatment is deeper than that; it never grants the person being ignored a timeline, or an answer.

That's what I have always struggled with. If my ex; had just said:  Look I'm upset right now, but I'd like a day or two to just cool down, collect my thoughts, I still love you.

I would say 99% of our problems. Would have never been problems. We may have just been happy.

Silent treatment destroyed us. And I played a part in that, because all I wanted to do was talk, and ask, what's wrong, how can we resolve this, lets not go to bed angry, crying.

I said in another thread:  BPDs arent avoidant, rather "resolution avoidant".

With BPD its deeper than an unresolved problem. Your deeling with feelings not facts. My boys felt hurt by their mum and constantly contacting them just picked at the scab and didnt give it time to heal. With BPD its those negative feelings that have to dissipate.  My boys had a valid point with their mum. She had lied to them and about them.

With BPD we may never know what the trigger is. It could be guilt or shame or that they feel we have wronged them in some way. Its more than just a case of I didnt do the washing up. Its I didnt do the washing up so I expect her to do it so im taking her for granted so I dont care about her so I cant like her so im using her etc etc etc.

We can never be sure of the chain so we cant resolve it easily.

This is a worthwhile topic to bring up, I agree - it seems to affect so many of us on here. But we should not be trying to fight fire with fire.

I'm currently enduring something like the 4th bout of ST/being ghosted. For those of you unfamiliar with my posts, we live in an extremely close knit town. I see him frequently, he lives just a tiny walk away from my place, and although we've been officially split up almost exactly a year, he has (of course) recycled me, been back, gone, and back again. This current ST is just a tiresome and sad repeat of what I have endured before. It really doesn't hurt any less, but I am finding it easier to contend with each time. Not least of all because, in part, and as you've stated... .I know this will come to an end. It has become so sadly routine, my friends are all pretty much "he'll be back".  

Normally, I'm able to cope, but had a major step backwards yesterday when I saw him. He pretty much tried to pretend that he hadn't seen me as we crossed paths, and that he had suddenly had something important to look at on his phone.  I came back home and cried my eyes out; I actually felt sick with sadness.

The rejection is horrendous, however much our logical brains tell us that a) it really is about them, not us, that b) it's a defence mechanism and c) it will probably come to an end at some point anyway. Almost without exception, the ST comes to an end. We are still people with hearts, often broken, and as much as I can paint on a 'I'm doing ok" face to the outside world 90% of the time, it still gets to me badly at times.

I don't actually agree with the idea of a  'timer' and being set back by making contact -  not at all. Once again, we have to be so careful not to try to apply a 'one size fits all' to people with BPD. They are human beings and individuals, however scarily similar some of the patterns of behaviour are that we've all endured.

It's been my experience that it has been contact that has in fact ended the ST. It's almost as though it's given him a stepping stone to be able to climb back down. When he suddenly and devastatingly dropped me out of the sky last year, just a week after talking about 'when you have my baby' (you all know the kind of shock) he went immediately into ST. I didn't know what had hit me - the man who texted me all day every day just dropped me off his radar overnight. He had told me, on our last date, that I was his first thought every morning. From that to total radio silence. When I bumped into him on a night out 3 weeks later, my attempts to broach a conversation with him resulted in him walking out of the building mid sentence (the first of several times he's done so)- I because he couldn't filter his emotions.

What broke the ST was a family friend delivering a painstakingly crafted letter I had for him, outlining my devastation at the breakup and thanking him for how happy he'd made me. There was also a very special gift that I had had for him before the break up, and wanted him to still have. To this day I believe he's been unable to read the letter. But the very next time he saw me, he was all over me like a rash, blowing me kisses, greeting me like a long lost friend and brokering an hour long heart to heart with me (in which the now common theme emerged of him not deserving me, the way he's treated me, am I sure I love him etc.) Contact actually made him break the ST, not prolong it. I am sure of it. It was followed by another ST, a recycle, another ST and then a devastating "I've deleted you from  my life" - which lasted 6 months -but that's another story.

Just before he went away on holiday this summer he came back into my life for a week... .as a lover not 'back together', mind. Now, following a major (3rd party) incident he isn't talking to me. Again. But he'll be back. It's just coping with being treated like a leper that I find so hard.

I think it's disingenuous to say that just because we're all here on the detaching board, we shouldn't be expressing wishful feelings, of wanting contact, of wanting to be acknowledged, even just wishing against all the evidence and logic, that things could be different. I reiterate, we have all had our hearts broken and as we are well know, this is a different league of heartbreak.  Knowing that we have to and should detach, or at least be indifferent, is one thing,  but we are human and we are fallible. I still love and miss my ex with all my heart - as I have said 1000 times, it's Dr. Jekyll I love, not Mr. Hyde.  

The 'end game' in question is that we are trying to mitigate our pain and find a way to cope with what really is an extraordinary set of circumstances, impossible for those 'outside' of it to even comprehend.  

We may know that the best thing all round is to detach, but, for me at the very least, I want to know and believe that he is going to talk to me again - not necessarily to reconnect, or to be recycled, because even I think I have had enough. I am so heart worn, so sick and tired of being sad.  But, funnily enough, I would like to be acknowledged as a human being and as someone who is alive and visible, not walked past as if I were a ghost - most of all from the person whom I have loved most in the world, the person who was kissing me and holding me a few weeks back. This is at the crux of it - I know a relationship isn't possible and he's not fit for purpose when he dysregulates - he has demonstrated it over and over again. But a friendly wave, a smile, a hello, any of those, can and should be possible, especially from someone who is capable of profound lucidity and who shows just some, not all, BPD traits.

All I do is carry on wishing and hoping to reach that point. Sadly, I have to come to realise with my ex he is pretty much 'all or nothing'; he either has me in his life and talks to me, even tries to reignite the relationship... .or he's not talking to me at all. I seem to put him in turmoil and he can't see me as someone just to be friendly to. I suppose to him, in some way I will always be 'his', even if he doesn't want the relationship.  

I have a very supportive friend who is a matron in charge of a ward for BPD patients. She knows her stuff, big time. Her advice to me has been the same throughout -  reflecting ST is the very WORST thing we can do. It reiterates the lack of self worth. The only way to break it is to carry on, being consistent, not taking no for an answer, and being the stabilising force.

I agree with Turkish's initial response to this post. 

 

Let me modify my previous responses.

I agree with Turkish's initial response to this post.  And in saying 'reciprocating dysfunction' I assumed you meant that meeting ST with ST is not a healthy response, and achieves even less. Not, as the OP has read it, to mean begging, crying etc. is reciprocating dysfunction.

It is exactly as I outlined in my post above, and follows the advice given by friend who is a mental health professional.

When I was subjected to a horrific 'deletion from his life' for 6 months this year, ghosted in front of mutual friends, cut off on almost every avenue, and so forth, I thought I was going to die from the grief. I didn't know someone so loving and affectionate could become so cruel and unkind. However, I can now clearly see that whereas the ST in question was in no small part a 'punishment' to me,  it was also very much because he didn't want a reminder of me, to see my face, to see what he'd thrown away. I suppose, to have a reminder of how much I disappointed him by not being perfect.  I think that there are different kinds of ST, certainly in the case of my ex there are, and this one was most certainly doled out to make me learn a lesson... .it was due to an incident (long story) and my ex was seeking a way to push me even further away. Apparently overlooking that he had already dumped me from a great height, he then went on to delete/block me from all social media to drive the message home.

I didn't react. Not once. Not one message, not one text, call, or appeal to him. And in the midst of all of this, HE approached ME... .to tell me at close quarters how he had deleted me from his life. And then began a long rant at me about why he had done so, how could I have done what I did etc. I actually walked away from that conversation. He was clearly antagonised that I hadn't responded to his blocking and deleting me (although short of pitching up on his doorstep, how could I?) I didn't send any love letters begging him to reconsider. This time, I did nothing.

Totally floundering, not knowing what to do, and in horrific pain, I actually reflected his silence and went about my business in town, going out, etc. and pretended to the outside world (not my friends, obviously) that I was ok. I thought it was best not to show him I cared, was falling apart. I didn't want him to 'win' and send the message that ST was the way to win one over me.  I did this for 6 months.

It was him who broke this silence, him who came to me and once again picked up the conversation, him kissing me, ranting at me and having a heart to heart all in the space of one evening. He reiterated again how I didn't exist to him at all, I was cancelled, I was deleted, that he wasn't talking to me. All the while, sitting next to me, telling me that he wasn't talking to me.  lol

But, it seems that all STs are not created equally. I know for sure, for sure that this particular ST is because my ex feels worthless. Someone else, a 3rd party, attacked him verbally and phsyically. To my utter dismay, the net result was that he exited the room and told me to disappear from him because he's 'an evil person' and doesn't deserve me. He is once again, not talking to me.

This ST is so very very clearly about him, so clearly about his own lack of self worth, that I have taken a different tack this time. Not least of all in light of the fact that 2 months ago he broke the last epic ST by locking me in a toilet that night for over an hour and having an epic heart to heart with me (yes, the same night as he told me I was still cancelled and deleted.) Having had such a breakthrough and some moments of real clarity, I am damned if I am going to go into complete silence again and let him use this as a weapon or at least, a defence mechanism to pretend nothing has happened between us. I  have begun sending kind and thoughtful messages to him, once a week or thereabouts. Just saying hi, have a nice day.

He is reading them. Yesterday, he walked past me, and I'm afraid I cracked. I sent a message telling me that he is really hurting me and I am sure that's not the desired response. He is at least reading my messages.

I don't see me sending a message as setting me back in any way shape or form, in my efforts to forge at least some kind of friendly contact with him.  He can't dump me, I'm already dumped. He can't hurt me more than he already has. I don't think he'll block me on this last avenue of communication because he needs to have one option to contact me should he feel the need. Never say never, of course. But with regard to my last experience of ST with him in which we went 6 months without talking, just seeing him and being ignored, how will I ever know if me mirroring it effectively 'controlled the timer' as the OP states? Or if in fact, it extended it. We won't know. At the time when he re-approached me, I thought I had won the battle and sweated him out... .after all it was him who came to me.

But for all I know, he could have been hoping for me to approach him all of that time, and despite his silent rage against me, prove to him that I wasn't abandoning him.  So this time, that is the tack I am taking.

The bottom line is, none of us really has the answer. But I reiterate, I don't believe we should be fighting with fire. And it really depends on what triggered the ST in the first place. In my case it clearly is not always a punishment being metered out - or if it is, it's towards himself, not me.

I've used this silent treatment/NC as an opportunity to change my number, bloke her everywhere and anywhere and even moved house (not as a result of her) and she doesn't know where. I'm using this time to detach and if she ever does decide she wants to end the ST/NC she'll be surprised to find she can't contact me. She's lost me this time around so detaching is the only way forward for me now

My intent wasnt to use ST as a weapon, or a defense mechanism.

My point was more along the lines of; typically, when they give you silent treatment, going after them, chasing them, calling, texting, typically only results in you being pushed farther away, with them more angry, you more hurt, and when or if they finally come around, you end up being the one appologizing for being so persistent and not respecting their boundaries.

It gets all mixed up.

My point was, if you genuinely want them to contact you, from my many many experiences, and the 9 months reading 1000s of posts on this board, it seems there is a common thread. When we stop pursuing, they have a higher tendency to start pursuing us, coming back, initiating contact.

Thats all this was.

And the picture, we needed a little humor here. I mean, we're all going through tough situations.

The post was not an end all be all. Simply a generalization I'm sure many - but not all - could identify with.

Hi GoingBack 

I think the thing is, that your initial post reads as if ST is always doled out by our exes as a punishment - but what I for one am trying to illustrate is, that it is far more likely, at least some of the time, a defence mechanism. To protect themselves, to withdraw, etc.

I was also trying to outline that yes, my ex did come back to me after 6 months of me reflecting his silence. He was so angry and pushed me away so completely, I didn't see any other option. Looking back, who is to say though, that had I attempted to reach out, he wouldn't have responded any sooner? The ST I am currently experiencing is so clearly not based on anger towards me, but to a lack of his own self worth - otherwise I'm pretty sure my attempts to reach out to him would have been greeted with a nastygram or further blocking. They haven't been... .to date. 

It's so different to quantify, it really is, because he didn't acknowledge me for 6 months, but did my mirroring that shorten the ST, or prolong it? We will never know.

So all I am trying to say is that there isn't a blanket rule to all here.

This is the first time my ex has gone NC/ST with me, and I think that even though she is the one with BPD, she is much better about keeping her boundaries then I am. Whereas I would find it hard to resist replying if she texted me, she has no problem leaving them unanswered. Maybe it has something to do with the timer that you are talking about (I loved the graphic!), maybe it also could be that I am more in the FOG than she is, and/or that she has a lot more experience in moving on from relationships (having had so many broken ones) than I am. Maybe it also could be that she is much more prone to bust other people's boundaries than the ones she sets up. I too am taking the space to go full on NC, this time without a thought/hope that she will get back in touch. 

Hi Everybody,
Good thread! Thankyou for starting it G.B.T.O.C.
I like the metaphor. And, from my experience it seems pretty accurate. And, like Stripey says, it gets easier each time. Which is another reason to support G.B.T.O.C.'s metaphor, in my opinion; so as not to reinforce the bad behavior of silent treatment. Because, as we've all learned from board-posts; pwBPD will continue to use whatever works as a manipulation tool.

I'm in the midst of a silent treatment situation with my dxBPDso, currently. It really is a reminder of their untrustworthiness, for me. I'm doing okay. Anyhow, I like the metaphor. And, the great thing about the boards, is that it gives people a chance to express themselves. Sometimes in disagreement; which is also a good way for people to clarify their own thoughts.

Thanks again G.B.T.O.C., for the reminder about the timer. Hits home for me.