- Have you ever been in a relationship where,
every time you have a conflict, even a small one,
the other person just shuts down and doesn't wanna talk?
How do you deal with that?
That's what I'm talking about today.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist, and I make
mental health education and self-improvement videos.
Today's video is based on a viewer question from BossKitty,
and she said, I'm here for the advice.
My boyfriend and I just started, four months,
and he doesn't know how to express himself emotionally
or have a conversation concerning our relationship.
Every time I tell him his absence to our talks affects me
and we need to talk about it, he blows up
and gets angry and so on, which leads me to silence
and soak in all my concerns.
It's difficult.
I also suffer with depression,
and I deal with it fine on my own.
Now I have to develop ways to deal with this
and not show it in my face.
Please tell me how to deal with this, thank you.
Thank you, BossKitty, for this question.
There's a few things going on with this situation.
You have a boyfriend who doesn't wanna talk,
and it sounds like he doesn't wanna talk
when you talk about things like your relationship,
and then, when you try and press him on it, he gets angry.
His anger makes you withdraw
and silently deal with your pain.
The first thing you need to do is figure out,
is his lack of talking about the relationship
because he's not a good communicator,
or is it because he just
doesn't wanna talk about it every time you ask?
I'm assuming that you're not asking him every day,
are we okay, because no one wants to be badgered
about the state of the relationship,
because the person on the receiving end
can feel like they're always having to reassure you.
And some reassurance can work at first,
but after a while, it gets old, and he can get tired
of always needing to build you up and make you feel secure.
If this is the case, the solution would be
to find different ways to build yourself up
and boost your self-confidence.
But I'm going to assume that that's not the issue here.
Another possibility
is that your boyfriend is not a good communicator.
So if you start getting too deep with him,
he may not know how to express his feelings very well.
If you keep trying to get him to tell you more
about how he feels, he can get defensive and feel attacked,
and then he can attack back with mean comments
in response to having his vulnerabilities exposed.
How would you know if this was the case?
How much does he talk about other things?
How good is he
at talking about how he feels about something?
It's one thing to be able to give an observation
of a situation, because then you can just list the facts,
but it goes to another level
to talk about how a situation affects you emotionally
and your opinions about it.
Some people aren't good at identifying
how they feel about something, so they may relate a story
without any secondary level of detail.
If that's how he communicates, he's going to struggle
when you start talking about your relationship,
because your relationship isn't just a series of facts.
It's the abstract concept of your connectedness.
So one thing you can do in this situation
is to ask him more open-ended questions like,
how do you feel about that?
What are your thoughts about that,
or, how would you handle that?
Open-ended questions require more than a one-word answer,
and the person who isn't good at communicating
but is willing to communicate if you help
will try and answer those questions.
You can get him in the mode
of answering more open-ended questions with you,
and then at some point, it may get easier for him
to answer more open-ended questions about your relationship.
Here's an example.
You go to a barbecue together,
and you're on your way back home in the car,
and he says, I liked that, that was nice.
You can say, what did you like about it most?
He says, I don't know, it was just good.
You know, it was a good time.
You don't wanna jump in and say,
well, what specifically was good?
I enjoyed it too,
but you can't tell me what you liked about it?
That's the quickest way to get him to shut down
and not wanna say anything, because essentially,
you're pointing out the problem
that he probably knows he has at some level,
that he doesn't have a lot to say.
Instead, give him an example
of how you were wanting him to answer the question.
S, he says it was a good time.
You say, I really liked the ribs, and I thought
they did a good job of making everyone feel comfortable
by having us play games and things.
These details may trigger him to add his own details.
So he may say, yeah, those were some good ribs,
and it was nice that they had stuff to do.
I don't like just sitting around
at people's house and eating.
Do that several times: you ask for details;
he gives you a basic answer without details;
you add your own details.
He may learn to anticipate what you're asking him
when you ask for something, and he may get better
at giving more details and having more to say.
If he gets more comfortable talking about generic things,
he may then get better about talking about emotional things
like your relationship.
So this is just a basic example, and I'm making
a lot of assumptions here about why he won't talk.
Of course, there are more specific reasons
that have to do with things like if you're pressuring him
to do something he doesn't wanna do,
like be exclusive or move in or get married.
Those could be reasons
why he doesn't wanna have the relationship talk.
Now, it's one thing not to talk
because you're a poor communicator,
but it's another thing entirely
to be good at communicating but just choose not to.
One reason a person may do this
is when they're giving you the silent treatment.
You usually see this in the setting of an argument
or if you didn't do something that he wanted you to do.
The silent treatment is a passive-aggressive way
of showing anger and punishing you.
The person refuses to talk to you.
Now, this doesn't literally mean that he's ignoring you.
Instead, you may get one-word answers to questions.
The answers like detail
because he doesn't wanna talk to you about it.
Also, he doesn't initiate any conversation
until the period is over.
So the only time he talks is when he's answering
a question from you, and then it's super brief.
If you ask him, is everything okay, he says, yeah, I'm fine.
When he's in this state, if you press for more details,
he may lash out at you, just to get you to shut up.
That's clearly different from a person who lashes out
because you're pressing him too hard to say things
when he has nothing to say.
If your boyfriend is a silent treatment person,
you have a bigger problem, I'm sorry to say,
because the silent treatment
is a way for the person to punish you
by shaming you or withholding validation from you.
An example of that
may be that you have a fight about something.
He gets mad and yells or says something mean.
That's not the silent treatment yet.
Then you recognize your part in the fight and you apologize.
He knows you want to either hear him apologize
or tell you it's okay and that everything will be all right,
but he purposely withholds that assurance
so that you can go a while feeling uncomfortable
and maybe insecure about the relationship.
You're naturally gonna worry
about how long he's gonna be angry at you.
So, he then withdraws and doesn't talk for a while,
leaving you to fret about the state of the relationship.
How do you handle this?
Well, you can't pull him out of the silence.
If he's using the silence to punish you,
he's not gonna stop until he's satisfied
that you've been shamed enough
or that he's extracted enough pain from you
or taught you the lesson that he's trying to teach you.
So, I think the best thing that you can do
is ignore him when he's doing this.
Step away from the situation and get your composure.
This also gives him a chance to cool down if he's angry.
Some people who do this need the mental space
to work through their emotions on their own.
And there's nothing wrong with needing some distance
when you're hurting or angry.
The passive-aggressive part of this
is when he doesn't acknowledge that he's responding to hurt,
and he gives the appearance that everything is fine,
even though he's acting like you don't exist.
Then, while you're away from the situation,
do things to take care of yourself emotionally;
that is, do things that soothe you.
This could be talking to a friend
or going for a walk or watching a movie.
If you appear unphased by his silence, chances are,
he'll break the silence sooner than he otherwise would,
because it's not having the desired effect.
Then, when he comes out of the silence,
that's when you address
whatever issue you were needing to discuss.
You're not gonna get very far
by calling him out on the silent treatment,
because he can just act
like he doesn't know what you're talking about,
and that's the beauty of passive aggression.
Passive aggression gives the appearance of right doing
or compliance with a covert negative behavior
on the back end that's harder to see.
So in this case, on the front end,
he's saying everything's good.
I don't know why you keep asking all these questions.
I said no.
But on the back end, he's only talking to you
if you talk to him and giving bare-minimum answers
with little to no detail, knowing that you want more details
and back-and-forth conversation with him.
But here's the last point, and this is the reason I say
that this is a bigger problem than just not talking.
Even if you win by getting him to break the silence,
by ignoring him, you don't gain much,
because he'll find another way to get the same effect
of punishing you when he's angry, and that's the issue
that has to be addressed, the need to punish you.
Some people believe that if you don't validate them
in some way, you deserve punishment,
and that punishment can take different forms.
This kind of toxic behavior is hard to change,
but it can change if the person is ready to do some work.
I did a video on 10 signs of a toxic relationship,
and I guess this would be number 11.
But if you wanna see more toxic behaviors
and ways that you can deal with them,
you can watch that video here.
If you watch my channel a lot,
you'll see that this is a little different
from my usual teaching about psychiatric illnesses.
But mental health is broader than illnesses.
Beneath the illness is still the need to relate to people.
I really believe that relationships
are the true currency, because at the end of the day,
that's all we have left, relationships.
And your individual mental wellbeing
is a building block for how you function in the world.
So that's how this all comes together.
Becoming the best that you can be has a trickle-down effect.
So let's just keep pushing forward
for the quest for self-improvement at every level.
See you next time.