Combating The Silent Treatment

Combating the Silent Treatment

Ahab went home angry and sullen because of Naboth’s answer. The king went to bed with his face to the wall and refused to eat!

1 Kings 21:4

JILL TOLD HER HUSBAND, Mike, that she wanted to spend a weekend at the beach with friends. Mike responded with silence. He had been silent for four days when Jill came to see me. I made three guesses:

1. This was not the first time Mike had given her the “silent treatment.”
2. Mike was very unhappy about the idea of Jill going to the beach with her friends.
3. Jill was not meeting Mike’s emotional need for love.

I later learned I was right in all three guesses.

Let me assure you that if you want a healthy marriage, you must not settle for silence. If you are the partner who has stopped talking, you need to realize that you are shooting yourself in the foot and sabotaging your marriage. Being silent may be better than lashing out in anger, but as a long-term solution it rarely helps anything. One rather vivid biblical example of the silent treatment comes from King Ahab, a notoriously evil king of Israel. When Naboth wouldn’t sell his vineyard to the king, Ahab went home and lay on his bed with his face to the wall—not a productive response.

If you are the person receiving the silent treatment, understand that when your spouse stops talking, there is always a reason, and usually more than one. If you want your spouse to talk, you must think more and talk less. Criticizing your loved one for not talking will likely prolong the silence.

Father, forgive me for the times when I stop talking to my spouse out of anger. Please show me a better way to respond. And when my spouse is silent to me, please show me how to listen better and figure out the reason.

Silence