Why the "Silent Treatment" is a Commitment Killer
When our son was small, my husband and I used to fight all the time. Who fed him last? Who changed him? Whose turn was it to go off by themselves for a while? A lot of the time we yelled at each other until someone just gave up and walked away. But the most damaging fights were the ones when we stopped talking to each other. Now a new study has found that the “silent treatment” can ruin a relationship. As a child, my mom pulled the same sort of thing. She was great at withdrawing. When I was older, I learned that it was from depression and numbing herself with alcohol and painkillers. But she just wasn't there. I learned to get around it but I'd have to say it affected me for life. They say you marry your mother (even women), and my husband, sad to say, used to share a lot of qualities with her. It didn't take much to make him mad, and when it did, he would retreat into silence for sometimes days. I think we even went fo...