Is this Silent Treatment or am I wrong?

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

So I caught my exBPDbf lining up my replacement (I did not "catch" him with her but heard through the grapevine she was being lined up and that "he had just used me" so I questioned him on this on the phone 5 weeks ago and he immediately got defensive and rageful saying "I do not even know anyone with that name... . we were never anything and I am ceasing communication with you now." Then he hung up.

I was calm when i called as I kind of suspecting it given we had been having a rough relationship and I had told him a few days prior we needed space.  I said "I am not mad but why the lies and I heard that you had met someone else while with me named XY."  Then he got mad saying he did not know anyone with that name, etc.

Is this considered silent treatment?  I had tried to email 3 emails in those 5 weeks after just asking why he met someone and did not tell me and continued to lie all to no answers. 

I ask of this is silent treatment as he did yell "we were never anything and I am ceasing communication with you now." Then he hung up.

[barbwire911]

So I caught my exBPDbf lining up my replacement (I did not "catch" him with her but heard through the grapevine she was being lined up and that "he had just used me" so I questioned him on this on the phone 5 weeks ago and he immediately got defensive and rageful saying "I do not even know anyone with that name... . we were never anything and I am ceasing communication with you now." Then he hung up.

I was calm when i called as I kind of suspecting it given we had been having a rough relationship and I had told him a few days prior we needed space.  I said "I am not mad but why the lies and I heard that you had met someone else while with me named XY."  Then he got mad saying he did not know anyone with that name, etc.

Is this considered silent treatment?  I had tried to email 3 emails in those 5 weeks after just asking why he met someone and did not tell me and continued to lie all to no answers. 

I ask of this is silent treatment as he did yell "we were never anything and I am ceasing communication with you now." Then he hung up.

[blissful_camper]

It's certainly not what one would expect from a healthy adult.  It's abusive.  There's no reason to lie, or play games, or rage.  I'm sorry you had that experience. 

[cosmonaut]

It sure sounds like the silent treatment.  It's very hurtful and it's pretty widely considered abusive.  Unfortunately, it's quite common from pwBPD.  It's easier to just ignore you than to deal with the emotional entanglements of actually dealing with you.  I don't know that they mean it to be abusive, but it still is in practice.

I'm sorry you're dealing with this.  My ex was awful about the silent treatments.  I know how much they hurt.

[Want2know]

I ask of this is silent treatment as he did yell "we were never anything and I am ceasing communication with you now." Then he hung up.

Overall, based upon that communication and the one you just had with him, it seems that he wants to be left alone to do whatever it is he wants to do with his life.  Can you do the same - leave him alone and get on with your life?  You have a husband that you are not sure you want to remain with - it would seem that you are deflecting that more important issue by focusing on what your ex-bf is doing.

I hope this does not offend you - just trying to help you work on detaching from him instead of remaining caught up in his life anymore.  Forward thinking. 

[barbwire911]

@WanttoKnow: No I am not offended.  It is always good to look at all angles.  He may want to be left alone but I feel, (with any normal person) when you have a relationship and one person gets a replacement and the other hears and just wants an explanation (especially when 2 days before he had gone on how he loved me and even asked me out to lunch) as to what is the rationality for this behaviour.  He can want to be left alone but he could say in a normal tone, "well I want to leave this on good terms and I know we were friends prior to this and let me hear your feelings out, etc."

I agree I have issues too I need to look at and am in the process of doing that. I am just not used to any relationship where someone suddenly says (for no reason at all except being asked why they were replaced and lied to about it) "I am ceasing communication, and you were never anything to me anyways." That is pretty harsh and he may want to be left alone, but there should be consideration of the other person's feelings.  It is not like I was constantly calling, emailing or even harrassing him continuously.  I heard about the replacement and decided to question him on it to see what was truth and that was essentially the angry, defensive line I got.  Since then silence for the most part.

[Mutt]

Hi barbwire911, I'm sorry to hear about your exe's crass behavior. I share similar experiences. If I engage my ex with asking her about something that she was responsible for, she will get extremely defensive.

For example, I have mentioned to her about the affair in the past. I know when it started with the replacement. If I engage her with the truth  about her actions, she makes an excuse. In this case she said that she was leaving me while we were still cohabitating for months and that it's not an affair! It had been going on for several months.

I know that she's lying and that I'm unto the truth by her reactions. It's a pattern with everything that I know that is the truth and I'm met with different degrees of hostility. She feigns responsibility for her actions and god forbid I question it.

It sounds like your ex is lying. If yours is anything like mine. Having said that, I was angry in the beginning after she had left a LTR so abruptly and without logical reason at the time. My anger has tapered off and I don't push it by asking her about the r/s that we had, including anything with the affair(s) and her current partner. It is what it is, but if I'm met with that type of hostility when I do ask her something that is my business with the kids, I know I'm unto something, she's usually lying.

Listen to your intuition, mine was always there during the r/s and I continuously denied it. I'm out of the FOG and refuse to go back into it, I choose to not ignore my intuition after this messy r/s and break-up.

[Want2know]

@WanttoKnow: No I am not offended.  It is always good to look at all angles.  

This is a good thing because I remember when I first became a member Tony C. brought up angles I was not wanting to look at.  It really helped me.

So, here's another angle... . do you think that perhaps because you are married that he is feeling like the relationship with you was just something temporary?  Something that you needed, and he needed, and as it evolved, it didn't turn out as either of you wanted or planned?

[barbwire911]

@Wanttoknow:  You bring up an interesting point in the marriage angle as myexbfwBPD was always very insecure that I had ANY other man in my past before him.  And sometimes out of nowhere, I would get phone calls from him where he would rage for an hour on the phone with me stating he knew I was cheating on him  and that I still loved my ex-husband and because I stated in the past my ex was a good person, he knew I loved him instead and not my now exbfwBPD.

I tried to explain that everyone has past partners and I am 39 years old.  He has an ex wife and has many ex-girldfriends and he is the one that cheated and has had about 6-7 affairs on his ex wife before they were divorced.  And they were married for only 5 years. Finally when I got him to calm down a few days later he admitted he feels very jealous of my ex and threatened just because I stated he was "a good person." He said "no new man wants to feel competitive with their girlfriends' ex and to know he is a good guy."

I mean to me that reaction was so over the top as he has told me many times he believes his ex meant well but they were just not meant to be together, etc.

Anyways he constantly thought I was still sleeping with my ex and it was a constant thorn in his side.  In the 2 hour convo we had where he told me he loved me and asked me to lunch the next day (the one 2 days before he raged at me for asking him about the replacement when I found out) he said "why are we so volatile?" And then without waiting for a response he told me "alot of it stems from the fact of how I feel about your ex husband."  And I was like 'well you could have talked to me in our relationship about it instead of randomly yelling." And he was like "have lunch with me tomorrow I would really like that."  And we ended the conversation well and then the next morning he saw me at work, and I said no to lunch as we needed some space and he walked behind me saying "this is so hard... . do not go." And then I heard about the replacement and a mere 12 hours later he raged on the phone and said the one line "I am ceasing communication with you and you never meant anything to me."

But I do know the fact I had an ex husband and said he was a good guy (not constantly or anything but just when we were talking) sparked him for some reason as from there he suddenly had outbursts and yelled at me for cheating and not loving him and being in love with my ex, etc.

And I always reassured my exbfwBPD he could talk to me about his feelings in relation to my ex and any issues he had and he said "I am jealous and I hate feeling like that so that is why I rage. I keep things bottled up and explode."

So I know he is very insecure about the fact I have an ex which is weird as everyone has an ex usually.  And he was also mad that I did have sex with my ex, but it was not when I was with him nor anyone else.  I tried to explain to him that of course I had sex with him but how could I know I was going to meet my exbfwBPD and when I did have sex with the ex I never knew the exbfwBPD.  It was all very bizarre but no matter how I explained it he was just mad I had an ex and sometimes he could admit to the jealousy and his feelings and at other times he just chose to randomly rage about it and rage about things that were before I even met him.

One time he asked me about how I got into Criminology at university and why i chose that degree and I explained it to him.  And I just said in there"yeah the guy i was dating at the time, I could now analyze using that degree!" (when I was age 20, which is 19 years ago) and he actually got mad and shot back me a nasty email response saying "do not tell me about any man you were with in the past as no guy wants to hear that. Likely you have an STD now."  It was such a bizarre response to something so silly. I found alot of his responses and reactions were out of proportion to the statement or issue at hand.  So I tried to talk to him about it and his response was "no man wants to know you had another man in your life before them and that you might have an STD."

yet I never mentioned anything about STD's or anything even about the guy. It was so weird.