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Silent Treatment & Covert Abuse

The silent treatment is a brutal form of abuse, one that pins you against your own mind. You declare war on your intuition and everything that you know.

  1. Peace
    The silent treatment is a brutal form of abuse—one that pins you against your own mind. You declare war on your intuition and everything that you know to be true. Once your identity has been sufficiently eroded, the psychopath can use this final technique without any chance that you’ll leave them. Instead, you will torture yourself, carrying out the remainder of the abuse for them.

    They will leave you alone with your thoughts, planting subtle hints and suggestions over social networking to encourage your paranoia. You will run through everything you’ve done in the relationship, blaming yourself for your feelings & emotions. You will wake up in the middle of the night, heart racing as you hope for a text from them. Nothing. You log into Facebook and see them chatting away with friends and exes. They’re not unavailable—they’re ignoring you.

    You will be expected to understand that they cannot talk for days on end, despite texting you on an hourly basis in the beginning of the relationship. You will begin to feel that you are on “probation”, despite having no idea what you’ve done wrong. You may become passive aggressive, drafting out long emails about their changed behavior and complete lack of contact. You might even feel strongly enough to suggest a break, but you will never follow through with it for more than a few hours. You will think you can out-ignore them, remaining calm and collected like nothing is wrong. But they will always win this game. Because they do not need your attention—they have already found someone else.

    When the psychopath begins ignoring you for days, it means they’ve found a new target. Otherwise, they would continue focusing all of their efforts on you. But now, you are just an obstacle. They’ve found something new and exciting—your emotions are just a bothersome speed bump in their latest romantic venture. They will never tell you this. They will just continue to read your desperate text messages, ignoring you without another word. They will lash out and accuse you of being obnoxious, crazy, and clingy. They will refuse to discuss anything over the phone or in person, unless it happens entirely on their terms. The abuse is no longer covert. Their contempt for you is unmistakable.

    The “crazier” you become, the more evidence they have to gain sympathy from their friends and new target. They use your increasingly unstable reactions to groom the latest victim.

    But despite all of this, they will not dump you. Not yet. They’re saving that for the right moment.

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Article Author: Peace