The silent treatment JUST KILLS ME.

[Jabberwocky]

I am currently a day in to the silent treatment by my uBPDw.  This was triggered by an insensitive moment on my part (it always is).  I apologized as soon as I realized my screw up, but that doesn’t absolve me from the silent treatment.   

I have avoided JADEing, pretty well this time, even though it I totally against my nature. I want to address it now?  Why couldn’t we?  If someone apologizes to me, I forgive them. If they are moving towards me, I am willing to try to make things better.   

The silence is deafening?  What is she thinking right now?  What sort of monster is she turning me into in her head?  When will it end?   What will she say when she finally talks?  Is this the one that we don’t recover from?   

Please make it stop. 

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

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[Jabiru]

Hi You could take this opportunity to go out for a walk and enjoy yourself. She probably needs time to process everything and calm herself. Try not to rescue her too much and let her practice the skill of self-calming. You could try checking in with her a couple times a day to see if she's ready to talk about. Good luck.

[HurtAndTired]

I just got out of a two-week-long split/silent treatment on Saturday from my uBPDw. In the past, after a day or two I would have been begging for forgiveness for something that I did not do, or something that I did do that was blown way out of proportion; groveling, making promises that I would change, etc. Really just willing to say or do anything to end the silent treatment. Why would I be ready to debase myself like this for a minor or imagined infraction? It's because the silent treatment is a form of emotional abuse and it hurts. This time, however, things went down very differently.

I have recently been placing and enforcing healthy boundaries and have stopped reacting to my uBPDw's maladaptive behaviors in the usual and expected way. I have realized that I have the power to no longer play her dysfunctional games by refusing to participate in them. This has completely thrown her off balance as her tools no longer work. Violence is no longer tolerated (I called the police the last time she got physical), suicide threats will result in a  referral to mental health services. Screaming and insults result in me walking away from her until she can be civil. The silent treatment is all that she has left, and that did not work for her either.

A little over two weeks ago she found out that her sister's ex-husband had been cheating on her sister with another of her sisters and that the affair had lasted for years. Of course, this got taken out on me...because, well I'm a man and we are all horrible. I was accused of having affairs of my own and all sorts of paranoid and delusional things. I calmly told her that none of that was true and that I would be going to bed in the guest bedroom until she could treat me in a civil way. This kicked off a two-week silent treatment. It was hell, but I forced myself to use the time in a positive way and did a lot of self-care activities for myself and my son during those two weeks. However, it got easier as each day went by and my instinct to grovel and beg started to recede. Learning how to reset our relationship dynamics is a learning curve for both of us.

After two weeks of barely speaking to me, she asked me in a very snippy way if we could take our son to Chuck E. Cheese on Friday afternoon because it would be too busy on Saturday. I realized that even though her tone of voice was not friendly, it was her dysfunctional way of offering an olive branch, so I took it. We took our two-year-old to Chuck E. Cheese and she acted as if the past two weeks of silent treatment had never happened. Things are now back to completely "normal." Future attempts at the silent treatment will be met by the same non-response from me. The plan is that when dysfunctional behaviors like the silent treatment do not produce the expected results (e.g. apologizing, groveling, etc.) those behaviors will lessen and eventually stop.

It's just B.F. Skinner/Behaviorism 101. Most behaviors exist because they produce results. When behaviors fail to produce results, the behaviors eventually stop. However, before they stop they can produce "extinction bursts." For example, when the rat that is used to receiving a food pellet from pushing a lever stops receiving the expected food pellet it will push that lever like crazy before it gives up and stops pushing it altogether. After that, it may even return to the lever once in a while to give it a few pushes to make sure that it no longer dispenses food pellets like it used to. In short, you can stop providing the "food pellet" to your wife (attention, JADE, etc.) when she gives you the silent treatment, but you can expect that the behaviors will likely get worse before they get better.

My one warning to you would be that if you choose to try this, you need to commit to it 100%. If you slip up and even once respond to her dysfunctional behavior with the usual/expected responses it will provide "intermittent reinforcement" which is the strongest form of reinforcement that there is. This will cause your efforts to backfire and will only reinforce the very same behaviors that you are trying to eliminate or reduce. Riding out the extinction bursts is no walk in the park, but this strategy has worked for me so far. I have also committed to it 100% because our 2-year-old son needs to grow up in a home where he sees Mom and Dad treating each other with respect and decency.

[SaltyDawg]

I have recently been placing and enforcing healthy boundaries and have stopped reacting to my uBPDw's maladaptive behaviors in the usual and expected way. I have realized that I have the power to no longer play her dysfunctional games by refusing to participate in them. This has completely thrown her off balance as her tools no longer work. Violence is no longer tolerated (I called the police the last time she got physical), suicide threats will result in a  referral to mental health services. Screaming and insults result in me walking away from her until she can be civil. The silent treatment is all that she has left, and that did not work for her either.

[...]well I'm a man and we are all horrible. I was accused of having affairs of my own and all sorts of paranoid and delusional things. I calmly told her that none of that was true[...]

After two weeks of barely speaking to me, [...] and she acted as if the past two weeks of silent treatment had never happened. Things are now back to completely "normal." Future attempts at the silent treatment will be met by the same non-response from me. The plan is that when dysfunctional behaviors like the silent treatment do not produce the expected results (e.g. apologizing, groveling, etc.) those behaviors will lessen and eventually stop.

It's just B.F. Skinner/Behaviorism 101. Most behaviors exist because they produce results. When behaviors fail to produce results, the behaviors eventually stop. However, before they stop they can produce "extinction bursts." For example, when the rat that is used to receiving a food pellet from pushing a lever stops receiving the expected food pellet it will push that lever like crazy before it gives up and stops pushing it altogether. After that, it may even return to the lever once in a while to give it a few pushes to make sure that it no longer dispenses food pellets like it used to. In short, you can stop providing the "food pellet" to your wife (attention, JADE, etc.) when she gives you the silent treatment, but you can expect that the behaviors will likely get worse before they get better.

My one warning to you would be that if you choose to try this, you need to commit to it 100%. If you slip up and even once respond to her dysfunctional behavior with the usual/expected responses it will provide "intermittent reinforcement" which is the strongest form of reinforcement that there is. This will cause your efforts to backfire and will only reinforce the very same behaviors that you are trying to eliminate or reduce. Riding out the extinction bursts is no walk in the park, but this strategy has worked for me so far. I have also committed to it 100% because our 2-year-old son needs to grow up in a home where he sees Mom and Dad treating each other with respect and decency.

Dude, you hit the nail on the head.  I could not have said that better myself.  It took me a bit of time to figure it out - I have and and currently am implementing it with good results and it is working for me too.  IMHO, this is the only way to handle a true borderline - for me (and you) this is what works. 

However, be mindful, there will be some lapses, and that must be treated with 'grey rock' during the dysregulation (a.k.a. 'do not JADE').  Also, reinforce positive behaviors with almost excessive validation, as borderline's feelings are much more intense than our own for a given stimuli.

All this takes energy, so be sure to do self-care for yourself so you can maintain the energy needed to manage your pwBPD.

Take care with self-care.