The silent treatment is not a good strategy.

We need to change the way we deal with adult relationships.

Relationships, eh? What a sticky-icky gewy-ewwy part of being alive. Relationships are so gross and messy. Eww! I get why some people are strictly animal people. I myself like kids more, but for most of the same reasons that other people prefer animals: they are simple and honest. Growing up you’re taught the rules of engagement: be nice, share your toys, be polite, don’t hurt your friends, say sorry if you do, and even as old as high school these rules are enforced and encouraged, and the kids who diverge from these rules face consequences. Depending on how old you are this consequence could either be the thinking corner or detention. But, we understand that our actions in relation to others, have consequences. We have to face up and own up to how we treat other people. The tricky thing about adulting is that unless you’ve committed a criminal offence, there is no higher system of accountability for how we treat others. Ah snap! No thinking corner or detention for the person who’s inflicted my emotional boo-boo? Damn. So, we start looking for something else. Some of us turn to religion, where God is the ultimate judge and is said to hold us accountable for the lives we choose to live and how we choose to treat others. Or, we may turn to other spiritual teachings about cause and effect, also known as karma. We’ll say things like, “They’ll get what’s coming to them!” Hmm, you sure about that? Will they really get ‘what’s coming to them’? Sounds like one of those things our guardians used to read to us before bed, can’t remember what they’re called … oh! Got it! Sounds like a fairy tale. I really don’t think the secret to having lasting quality relationships is waiting and hoping God will strike them dead or karma will sort them out for you. I think the real karma or holy divine judgement is that the quality of our relationships will reflect the effort we put into them. Not just efforts like sending them a text on their birthday, or buying them a chocolate when you go past the store, though these small efforts are cute and thoughtful. I’m talking about the effort that requires courage. The kind of courage where you have to sit and be vulnerable with the other person about the hurt they have caused you, even if you do feel kind of stupid saying it out loud. Yes, it’s stupid that you thought your close friend of years was ignoring you because you haven’t heard from them in a month and think it’s because they’re specifically trying to make you feel bad. That’s dumb as hell. But, you might hear from them that they’ve been snowed under at work and their child had been sick and the dog needs to get on arthritis meds that they’re refusing to even take. That’s why you haven’t heard from them in so long. You may feel dumb telling your sister that you feel that she doesn’t support your dream of becoming a teacher because you’ve been busy working hard on making that dream happen, and she shared an article on Facebook about family members who no longer speak to each other, and your anxiety is telling you that that article was a indirect attack on you and how unavailable you’ve been lately. Yeah, it takes some real courage saying that out loud. It may just be that your sister hasn’t figured out how to use the save function on Facebook yet, so she just shared that article to her wall as a way of saving it because it was an interesting article that she wanted to read about later. That’s what that was about. You may feel foolish as hell telling your husband that you feel like he’s not in love with you anymore because when was the last time he bought you flowers or spent one-on-one time with you and you’re starting to feel more like his roommate than his lover. He may have no idea that you even feel that way because according to him, ‘things seem fine and he thought you were happy’. He may just be extra preoccupied with work and have no idea that you even feel that way.

My point is that the quality of our relationships only improves if we have the courage to be vulnerable and admit those seemingly crazy thoughts swirling around in our heads about the other person. Sit them down, and tell them how you feel. Listen to what they have to say. Find middle ground. Find resolution, and a way forward. Trust in the love that they have for you and trust that it will get you through. You know, cancel culture means that we are way quicker to write people off than we are to reconcile. We are way too quick to call people toxic, when the quiet truth about our situation is that we did not have the courage or the maturity to express what it was that really hurt us, because the child in us is hurting, and the adult in us is telling us that we shouldn’t be hurt by something so small and insignificant and seemingly stupid. Dear beloved inner-child, the silent treatment is not a solution to your relational problem. ‘Testing’ the other person to see if they’ll pick up on the fact that you’re no longer speaking to them is not an adult, long-term and sound strategy. Ghosting them because you’d rather not communicate with them at all ever again, rather than discussing the issue, is not the grown-up solution. These are all strategies that I have known full grown adults to use as a way of dealing with an issue in long-term, even familial, relationships. What these strategies sound like to me are grown folk allowing their inner-child the run of the house. The inner-child who will choose sulking, over going to your friend, your sister, your loved one and saying, “I feel sad, I feel hurt, I miss you, I’m sorry.” The inner-child who will cut off long-term, life-giving, joy-giving relationships while simultaneously hoping that God or karma will bring to the offender’s attention that there is a problem. And if they don’t happen to notice, that they will be struck down dead by lightning … or God … or karma.

We have to parent our inner-child, we have to tell them that there is no monster under the bed. Your friend isn’t avoiding you; your sister does in fact support you; your husband is still in love with you. No one is out to get you. The people you love, love you back and they love you enough that they want to hear from you, you need to love them enough to want to be brave and vulnerable by sharing your feelings with them. You have to tell your inner-child that even if you can’t have your way, it does not mean that your loved ones love you any less. What you need from them may not be in their capacity to give in the moment. In relationships we need to learn to take the good with the bad, because our loved ones have taken our plenty of bad and decided that it doesn’t outweigh our good. Being a grown up who sustains healthy, long-term relationships means that we must allow ourselves to be accountable to others, and that we have to soothe and parent our inner-child, who is most times very irrational and emotional, which is okay as long as we’re not letting them run the show.

Can I encourage you to have courage? Can I reassure you that vulnerability is not weakness? Can I spur you on to choose forgiveness and kindness and consideration in your relationships? I hope that you receive my encouragement and reassurance. May your relationships be richer for it!  I hope that we can all treat our adult relationships with the love, respect and sacredness they deserve. I hope we choose to heed the voice of the wise and kind adult in all our interactions and decisions, while loving, nurturing and soothing our inner-child.

Peace and love.