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How happy or unhappy you are in your relationship depends on a variety of factors. From your physical health and social life to the work you do, there are many factors that affect the relationship you have with your partner. A healthy relationship where both are happy can sometimes seem like a challenge.
What makes the difference in many relationships is the ability to communicate with each other. Open communication often helps to solve problems early but sometimes that is not possible in one way or another.
What follows is a classic stalemate in the relationship: you ask the other person to change something and your partner completely shuts down. While you ask countless questions, you undergo the silent treatment, also known as the silent treatment . Whatever you do and whatever you say, you get no answer back, or the classic ‘nothing’.
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Silent treatment
This behavior is known as the demand-withdraw pattern, which has been described since the 1930s. 1 It turns out that this is one of the most common responses to conflict in a relationship and a major cause of divorce. For those who experience it, it is often an emotional torture and a reason to feel unhappy in the relationship .
If your partner ignores you and gives you the silent treatment for a long period of time, this is a form of punishment. It is a passive-aggressive approach to a conflict in the relationship, which only adds weight. Your partner is sending the message that you have done something wrong and that you no longer deserve his or her attention and love.
Although you wonder how you can break the silence, new research shows that it does not have to be so bad. At least, in some situations. The research that examines the silent treatment in relationships was published this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology .
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It’s all about money?
According to research published by the American Psychological Association, ignoring and withdrawing can be beneficial in some relationships and detrimental in others. The scientists discovered that it has to do with your income. Ignoring your partner can have a positive impact on the relationship on a low income, but a negative impact on relationships on a higher income.
Example
A wife asks her husband for a raise at work. For a man in a low-paying job with little job security, that’s a risky proposition. “By holding back from asking for a raise [and thus not acceding to her request], he can maintain his self-respect and place less emphasis on the couple’s fragile financial situation,” lead author Jaclyn M. Ross said in a statement . “For a wealthier couple in the same situation, the woman may feel that the man is unwilling to make a sacrifice for his family and that can cause friction in the relationship.”
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Experiment 1
The researchers conducted two experiments with heterosexual couples over an 18-month period. The first experiment consisted of 515 couples, the vast majority of whom were married and had at least one child or were expecting a child. Of the group of couples, 40 percent were at or below the poverty line.
All of these couples were visited at home by the research team and asked to participate in a series of discussions. The discussions ranged from something each partner wanted to change about themselves to disagreements in the relationship. In cases where the researchers found the ‘demand-withdraw’ pattern, relationship satisfaction remained stable over the 18 months for the couples with fewer financial resources.
Interestingly, relationship satisfaction decreased among couples with fewer financial resources who did not exhibit the behavior. This would suggest that couples with little money would be better off exhibiting this behavior, as it increases relationship satisfaction. Among couples who had more to spend and the ‘demand-with-draw’ pattern was visible, relationship satisfaction decreased.
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Experiment 2
The second experiment involved 414 newlywed couples who were visited in their homes four times over a 27-month period. The couples were asked to engage in the same series of discussions as the couples in the first experiment. The researchers again found that in the second group, the couples with lower incomes were less satisfied over the 27 months when the demand-with-draw behavior was not present.
“Life circumstances can be much more important to relationships than we think, so much so that these circumstances can affect how happy we are in relationships,” Ross said. The research shows that ignoring your partner in some situations is not as bad for the relationship as you might think.
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