November 2005 Insights
When a couple, or members of a family, have been together for a while they can have an argument without anyone speaking. It’s an amazing phenomenon that occurs because, knowing each other well, everyone involved has assumptions about the reaction they’d get from the other person.
Picture a couple sitting in front of the TV, not really interested in the TV but too burned out from their day to do much else. Subjects or characters on the TV, in the show or commercials, might trigger wandering thoughts.
It might be a sitcom about a mother-in-law coming for dinner, or a scene where one character expresses pain and the other offers comfort, or anything where a conflict between two characters is resolved – any of those and many more possibilities might lead to a Silent Argument. That’s when the person on the couch starts speculating how that scene would play out in their house.
She thinks that if she was to say something like that, he’d say something hurtful, so there’s no way she’d say it. Over the years, she has learned to swallow a lot of urges to speak to avoid him saying something painful. It’s just not worth it. It never works, it never resolves anything, and it hurts. After you’ve been hurt you learn to avoid hurtful situations. Better to just keep quiet.
He thinks that if he was to say something like that, somehow it would be the wrong thing. No matter what he says, somehow it’s wrong, or insensitive, or not romantic, or stupid and she’d say he doesn’t understand her. It’s just not worth it. It never works, it never resolves anything, and it hurts. After you’ve been hurt you learn to avoid hurtful situations. Better to just keep quiet.
They remember times they did speak, and how the scene played out. They remember feeling angry, and hurt, and frustrated. They remember the futility of that conversation, and all those old feelings begin to well up inside them. They might think about what would happen if they were to say something right now, and how it would follow the same old pattern, and how inevitable that is, and how it would hurt even more. It’s just not worth it.
If one of them happens to say anything into this morass of swirling emotions, the results won’t be pretty. Inside, they’re already wound up into a state of conflict and hurt, so the reaction would be immediate and hostile with the desire to protect themselves from hurt. Often that hostility is expressed in a passive aggressive way, meaning it’s the kind of seemingly innocuous or supposedly joking comment that puts a knife right between the ribs of their partner. After all, they know each other well. Needless to say, this result just adds to the confirmation that it’s better not to talk at all.
Every couple has some safe topics. The price of gas, criticizing local politicians, commenting on the war in Iraq, or sharing gossip about co-workers might be safe. Anything impersonal, that doesn’t touch places they’ve been hurt before.
Years of living together and sharing lives creates a form of intimacy. You know how this person squeezes the toothpaste tube and what they eat for breakfast. Years of Silent Arguments can create an emotional wasteland that changes that intimacy to the insight of a room mate, because you’ve lost your ability to talk about what matters to you. Not the price of gas, but the stuff that matters to you personally, deep inside, during your day. You feel lonely and unloved, and you start to feel you aren’t worth loving. It starts to hurt just to live, because you aren’t being supported emotionally.
This is a situation fraught with danger. People in this situation look outside their marriage for fulfillment. They might fill their time with a hobby, or volunteer work where they feel appreciated, or they might find someone they can talk to, and that can lead to an affair. You might think your partner would never have an affair – well, few people set out to have affairs. They seek, often unconsciously, what they need. People need to feel safe, lovable, and cared for.
Silent Arguments devastate relationships. Obviously, both parties know there is a problem. They don’t know how to deal with it. The woman tends to try to tackle emotional issues more than the guy does, but the woman also tends to have a very vivid ability to predict a bad outcome and anticipate a terrible conversation that hasn’t been spoken. She tends to feel just as miserable as if the conversation had been spoken. The guys tend to withdraw and try not to feel anything.
How can you break the cycle?
The first step is always being open to change. Sure, you don’t like the way it is now, but are you willing to try something totally different? At least you know how to cope with this emotional wasteland. Doing something different is a risk. You might get hurt. Worse, you are risking breaking what is already damaged. There’s only one thing worse than feeling lonely in a relationship, and that’s being alone.
The good news is, changing your relationship is actually a completely internal process. That means you can make real change in your relationship without ever discussing it with your partner. I realize that contradicts every self-help book every written, because they all say communication is the key to a healthy relationship. Most communication is not verbal: your energy tells people how to treat you.
If you are sitting beside your partner stewing in the pain of an emotional wasteland, your energy prohibits any kind of healthy interaction. Your energy is having the argument, and your body is conveying negative signals. What if you could change that?
You get the vibe thing – you know what kind of mood your partner is in. What if you could change that, too? What if your energy could send positive messages to your partner, and their energy responded by shifting to a positive state? That’s the magic of using energy work to learn self-mastery, because you learn to control what your energy is saying. Your energy tells people how to treat you – if you don’t like how people treat you, then you have the power to change that.
The bad news is, you have to make the changes. Even if both of you learn the work, you are totally responsible for the messages in your own energy. Being responsible is hard, but it’s powerful. It means you can change how people treat you. That’s an amazing thing. It can change the outcome, stop the old patterns, and create something new and wonderful. It is worth it.
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