I left the conflict, I won’t be back soon
“Withholding is one of the methods of manipulation when a partner does not want to discuss important topics, avoids answering or pretends that he does not hear the interlocutor,” explains psychologist Anna Brovko, an employee of projects helping victims of domestic violence: “You Are Not Alone” and “Fortress.” — This concept does not denote isolated cases, but a pattern, a regular way of behavior. This form of passive aggression is classified in psychology as emotional abuse.”
Initially, in English, the term withholding (emotional withdrawal or restraint) was used to mean refusing sex with a regular partner without explanation. However, sexual abstinence because one partner does not feel comfortable or trusts the other is a healthy form of boundary-setting. Unlike emotional abuse.
Daria and her boyfriend moved in together almost immediately after the start of the relationship. Three months later, Kirill began to ignore her - he could sit down for breakfast without waking Daria, go to a work meeting without informing her about it, and neglected joint leisure time.
“At first I silently agreed with what was happening. Then she started asking if he wanted to go for a walk, eat, lie down, and watch a movie together. As a rule, he refused, citing the fact that his life could not revolve around me. The time he spent on me turned into “in between.” And if I wanted to be with him, all I could do was accompany him from home to the meeting place with his business partner,” says the girl.
“The worst thing began when he stopped sleeping with me,” continues Daria. “I also stopped kissing and touching.” At all. He deliberately did not notice my attempts to seduce him. When I asked the question directly, he replied that this topic was not worthy of discussion: “Let's talk about something useful. Let's discuss politics, for example. I have a lot of other interests besides sex and especially sorting out relationships.”
At first, Daria reacted calmly, according to the principle “if you don’t want to talk, we won’t.”
“Then my anxiety began to grow: he pulls away - I’m scared - I get excited - I chase him and ask more and more questions. Later, I started crying, screaming and literally stamping my feet like a little child in a supermarket,” the girl says.
“I just wanted to talk, but he literally came out of the conflict onto the street.” I threw his things out of the window and once threw a glass teapot at him. The kettle broke on his knee, pieces of glass left scars on his legs.
I felt very lonely, I began to feel sorry for myself and scold myself. I was sure that he was ignoring me because I deserved it. I was ashamed of myself and it seemed that it would always be like this.”
The victim of withholding often feels as if he is banging his head against a wall. As a rule, the manipulated partner is ready to do everything in his power to solve the problem, but feels that he is the only one who cares. He has only one goal - to prevent a loved one from moving away and leaving forever. He is ready to solve the problem at any cost - and often pays with self-respect and personal boundaries.
Faced with being ignored, many cannot bear the stress and initiate contact even more intensely. In response, the withholder feels backed into a corner and becomes even more secretive. Another scenario: the victim backs down and begins to ignore in return. This may bring victory in a battle, but not in a battle: people who ignore each other will never agree.
Withholding can be confused with gaslighting or ghosting. But it's not the same thing. Gaslighting is an expression of doubt about the adequacy of a partner, his mental health. When a person talks about something important to him, he is faced with total devaluation: “you just imagined it,” “you’re making it up again.” In a ghosting situation, the partner simply disappears from the relationship: he blocks him on social networks without warning, and adds his ex’s number to the blacklist. The ghoster's strategy is to escape.
In the case of withholding, the aggressor devalues the addressee: “You don’t exist, your feelings and problems don’t exist, there’s nothing to talk about.”
According to Anna Brovko, withholding occurs not only in romantic relationships between partners and spouses. Parents, friends, colleagues and business partners can manipulate. Development always follows the same scenario - constantly withdrawing from communication when trying to discuss something problematic (transferring to another topic, putting on headphones, leaving the room, covering your ears with your hands, etc.). When you try to talk again, the pattern is repeated or the manipulator chooses a different method of destructive response. The result is also the same - they left the topic, the problem was not resolved, and the responsibility was shifted to the victim.
The same person can play different roles in an uprising situation. For example, in a relationship with his mother or boss, he will be a victim, and in a relationship with a friend, where he feels superior, he will be a manipulator.
Ignoring Matrix
Keen Mellor and Eric Sigmund once developed a scheme for matrix determination of the degree and object of ignoring. Three different criteria are considered: level, area, type.
In this case, four levels of ignoring are considered. This:
— presence of opportunity (a person ignores the presence of opportunities to solve the problem as a whole);
— its significance (understanding that a solution exists, but denying its effectiveness in advance);
— change in opportunities (understanding that a solution exists, but refusing to apply it in advance);
— personal abilities (impossibility of implementing a possible solution due to a personal unacceptable attitude towards such a method).
There are three areas of ignoring: “I”, other people, the situation.
Types of ignoring - incentive, opportunity and problem.
Using these three criteria, a matrix is obtained:
Using this matrix, it is possible to detect at what level the problem is being ignored and influence the person accordingly to encourage them to find a solution to the problem. The search for the “hearth” should start from the top row, the leftmost cell, and then go down diagonally.
Defense and attack
Anna Brovko explains that most often people with a narcissistic personality type are prone to withholding. Narcissistic personality disorder in its pure form is quite rare, but some of its features are quite common.
“Often the author of passive aggression is a person with narcissistic traits,” says the psychologist. - He does not believe that he is obliged to bear responsibility for his words, actions or inactions. The narcissist can recognize their partner's emotions, but does not consider them important."
Besides narcissistic disorder, there are other reasons why people withdraw from the problems of their loved ones. For example, a person with low emotional intelligence may have difficulty recognizing a partner's emotions and responding to them accordingly. In response to someone's attack, he remains silent, not understanding the nature of the interlocutor's indignation.
Another reason —
one of the partners behaved this way before, and he reproduces this behavior.
“For example, he was manipulated by his parents or previous partners. Such a person may decide this time to become a manipulator rather than the manipulated. This is a protective mechanism for one partner, but extremely destructive for the other,” explains Brovko.
In addition, emotional closedness may be a consequence of experiences in previous relationships in which trust was violated. And now the man decided not to open up to anyone, following the principle “if you don’t have an aunt, then you won’t lose her.”
So-called wounded warriors often come across as cold and uncaring. But this is just a defense mechanism.
Another heroine of this text, Christina, admitted that she manipulates her partner. She avoids discussing any sensitive topics and talking in a raised voice - Christina cannot stand screaming. A girl can shut down when the conversation gets to a dead end, and this tires her.
“As a rule, when I do this, my partner feels anxious. At this moment, although I am ashamed to admit, I calm down. My manipulations give us the opportunity to talk normally, as if this is the final point of the conflict,” says the girl. “A few years ago, I pretended to leave, got dressed and grabbed my keys, and my partner always stopped me. I don't do that now. And then I still didn’t understand what I felt at these moments and why, but my partner’s attempt to hold me always brought me satisfaction. As a child, I left home and my mother never caught up with me. Perhaps I somehow reproduced this in my relationships: my inner child seeks unconditional acceptance and understanding.”
When Christina withdraws into herself and goes into another room, after a while her partner follows her and asks to talk. “I feel a pang of conscience that I have chosen this pattern of behavior again. But at the same time, I also feel joy, because the intensity of passions is fading and we can discuss the conflict constructively. I know it’s difficult for him to take the first step and, in general, he tolerates being ignored very hard.”
She understands that such behavior is risky. “When people run after me or try to talk to me, I understand: “Everything is ok, they love me, I’m safe.” But if my partner gets tired of these games or is not in the mood for reconciliation, I feel rejected, insecure and unaccepted. The brain seems to say: “This is the end, he doesn’t love me.” And it’s difficult to cope with this feeling,” admits Christina.
As soon as one participant in a relationship becomes dependent on the other, he is denied the right to express any emotions.
After repeated attempts to “sit down and talk,” the victim of withholding experiences a feeling of internal emptiness and guilt, apathy, and sometimes depression.
Anna Brovko says that the highest aerobatics of a manipulator is to make sure that the victim exposes herself to attack. That is, a person who has been subjected to withholding begins to “gaslight” himself, changing his perception of the situation.
“I feel hopeless and despair because I don’t know how to listen and hear, and it’s important to me that I’m right,” says Christina. — After conflicts, I am emotionally exhausted, it is difficult for me to make any physical contact, I think and go through a lot. The hardest thing is the realization that I am not the easiest partner in a relationship.”
Response options
Psychologists identify several options for responses to being ignored:
- Displaying aggression, attracting attention by any means (including immoral). The stronger the ignore, the more terrible and reckless the actions of the ignored person can be.
- Closedness. An individual who has begun to be ignored can temporarily withdraw into himself in order to evaluate his own shortcomings and behavior and identify the reason for the ignorance directed in his direction.
- Withdrawal due to emotional abuse. The person does not try to understand himself or the motives of the person ignoring. He begins to castigate himself, blaming himself for everything. Gradually the feelings intensify, depression and apathy develop. This can lead to obsessive suicidal or criminal thoughts.
A productive response to being ignored is the active development of creativity, the search for new acquaintances, broadening one’s horizons, changing one’s place of residence or work. The individual does not withdraw into himself. He perceives being ignored as a signal for drastic changes in life, leaves his old social circle, and begins to move on.
Mom is anarchy
Daria suggests that Kirill’s emotional closeness was caused by a lack of love in childhood, the desire to earn it, and also an incredible fear of losing intimacy. Mom demanded that he be strong and independent, and she was stingy with expressions of love and care. One day he admitted to Daria that he and his mother had a very difficult relationship, and Kirill often wanted her to just hug him. “His tendency to ignore is a consequence of all his experiences,” says Daria.
Anna Brovko considers silent boycott in parent-child relationships to be the worst punishment for a child.
“At such moments, the child feels abandoned. And it doesn’t matter that his parents will continue to feed and clothe him. In childish logic, this means “I won’t survive alone.” Another option is to postpone the conversation indefinitely. “I don’t want to talk about this,” “let’s do it later,” “I don’t have time, I’m very busy” - the child sees that his problems are not important, which means he himself is not important. If parents agree to talk, but instead of listening, for example, they scroll through their social network feed, they make it clear that they do not care about the child. They don’t say it out loud, but children read such messages very quickly.”
Future relationships are influenced not only by communication between parents and child, but also between the two parents.
If a child regularly witnesses quarrels between parents, in which one wins through silence, he can copy the behavior of one of them and in the future become either a manipulator or a victim.
Either way, being raised by emotionally closed parents can lead to the development of coping patterns that a person relies on to cope with emotional pain in adulthood.
“Since childhood, family conflicts have been hushed up. If my sister and I argued, we were sent to the nursery - sort it out yourself,” says another victim of withholding, Olga. — There was no culture of negotiations: to listen, to name feelings, to regret. Mom and dad never quarreled in front of the children. But there was a lot unspoken between them, and it was in the air. I remember the feeling of constant anxiety: why is dad angry and losing his temper? Why is mom lost? What did I do wrong? And why will it fly to me in the next minute?”
This pattern was later repeated in the relationship between Olga and her husband. Igor began to ignore her after six months of the relationship, when the period of falling in love passed. Instead of talking through problems, they began to swear. “Igor avoided discussing a variety of topics: my jealousy, his relationship with alcohol and with children from his first marriage, overwork,” says Olga.
A typical pattern for the development of conflicts in their family was as follows: “For example, I don’t like that my husband takes work home and answers work messages on weekends. I ask him to correct his behavior.
He begins to flow away: he does not answer my request with either “yes” or “no,” or he says: “I’ll try, maybe, probably.”
Sometimes Igor physically withdraws from the conversation - he may go to the toilet without warning or simply turn away and start washing the dishes.”
Now Olga and Igor are undergoing psychotherapy, thanks to which it has become clear where their legs are coming from: “My husband has a domineering, authoritarian mother who suppressed his “I” and “I want” and instilled a sense of guilt in him. In our relationship, I am a projection of his mother. On the one hand, I can be warm, loving, gentle - a kind of ideal mommy. On the other hand, I display authoritarian traits, a desire to push and impose. Now our task is to get out of this model and build relationships on an equal basis, like adults.”
Relevance
Ignoring cannot be clearly called a negative behavioral feature. This is a kind of protective reaction to irritating factors. To better understand this formulation, it is worth considering a life example.
If a son asks his father a question and receives a rude answer, he can ignore the rudeness, which will be better than developing a conflict with an aggressive reaction to his father's behavior. This tactic will only work if rude responses occur frequently and are the norm for one person’s behavior. If such answers have not been heard before, you need to find out the reason for the change in behavior. Problems cannot be ignored. This will lead to their accumulation, development, and dramatic consequences.
Don't be silent at me
Withholder has been fenced off from the outside world with an impenetrable wall for so long that this protection becomes his own prison. Due to manipulative behavior, the value of the relationship is lost and trust in the partner is lost. The hardest thing is to admit your destructive behavior. In the case of a person with a narcissistic personality type, it is almost impossible to achieve change, says Brovko: the narcissist is confident that his behavior is completely appropriate to the situation and his partner. In other cases, an audit of the relationship can improve the situation - you need to find facts of withholding on your part, and then seek help from a psychotherapist. It will help you understand the causes of emotional abuse and options for getting rid of it. Sometimes the problem of withholding comes up while working on other topics with a specialist.
Faced with emotional closeness, Julia admits that her husband ignored her when she talked about what was important to her: improving living conditions, expanding living space, educating her child. Everything that Julia wanted to offer in these directions was cut short. Dmitry gave a short answer that “it won’t be like that,” “I don’t want it,” or “it’s impossible” - without any arguments, and, most critically, without seeking a compromise and trying to hear his wife.
“After that, I went and did everything myself in the hope that he would understand and appreciate it. But this is an illusion, she says. “I believed that I was investing much more in this relationship, and this only increased my anger and resentment.
The more Dima refused to discuss anything with me, the more anger and powerlessness covered me, turning into rage. I could even start screaming. And one day I slammed the glass door so hard that my arm went into it up to my elbow. But even then he continued to silently look at the monitor.”
The hope that Julia would one day be heard and appreciated did not die - it only intensified her depression. “It’s like you’re knocking on a closed door. At first you try with gentle persuasion and explanations, then you hammer at her with hysterical fits, but they still don’t open it to you. After such quarrels, we could not talk for weeks. When the silence dragged on for six months, we divorced,” she sums up. For six years now, Yulia and Dmitry have not lived together, but continue to communicate because they have a child together. Even after the divorce, their relationship did not improve. He may also not respond to Julia's messages and ignore her requests, although she has kept them to a minimum over the years.
The withholding cycle, left unresolved, becomes a pattern that can be repeated in each new relationship. To change a destructive pattern of conflict, both partners must first have the courage to identify what role they play in it and what motivates them to do so. As cliché as it may sound, communication is the key to success. It is important that both are ready to talk honestly and without mutual accusations. Since no one knows how to read other people’s thoughts, it’s worth starting by voicing the very fact of withholding.
Here are some ideas from American psychologists that can be used to overcome emotional distance:
- Identify recurring patterns that lead to conflict.
- Learn to manage your emotions and don’t let negative emotions overwhelm you—most likely, you can’t do this without the help of a specialist.
- Create an atmosphere of safety, trust and understanding.
- Make a conflict resolution plan together and stick to it.
- Tackle one topic of conflict until you fully understand it.
- Focus on mutual aid and the pronoun “we”: for example, “together we can get through this.”
- Look for the best ways to communicate. If you find it difficult to express your emotions out loud, try writing letters or messages to each other.
Next, Anna Brovko suggests acting according to the situation.
“If your partner does not accept your proposals, changes are impossible, and you need to get out of such a relationship. If your partner makes contact, you need to voice the conditions under which you are willing to stay. But this is not a guarantee of change,” says the psychologist.
For the victim of withholding, the most important thing is her personal boundaries, psychological state and quality of life, and not the “treatment” of her partner for destructive behavior. And in most cases, the only way to take care of yourself is to leave a toxic relationship.
Daria says that her relationship with Kirill reached a dead end and they broke up. “After three months of pain and loneliness, he returned and we were forced to start talking. The conversation did not go well for another three months. All this time we tried to live separately and gradually articulated our feelings, thoughts and fears. Now I have moved to another country, and he came to me. To be honest, I don't know what I would do without him. However, I am still reflexively afraid of looking and being weak, in need of help and love. I am still afraid of being rejected and my needs ignored. I also fear that any other potential relationship with a man will inevitably be the same. I no longer believe in “happily ever after,” but I know for sure that if there is a chance to fix something, it’s only by talking.”
Recommendations from psychologists
Experts indicate the effectiveness of the psychological technique of ignoring only in healthy relationships, where any deviations from the norm cause bewilderment of the partner. In order to determine the advisability of using ignore, answer the following questions:
- How attached is the girl to me to ask for forgiveness?
- Am I ready to end the relationship in case of reciprocal detachment?
- Is her mistake really worth ignoring? Perhaps this is a lack of attention from others? What do I want to get at the end? What should a girl do to prevent the situation from repeating itself?
The method of manipulation is not an indicator of a trusting relationship. Before ignoring, try to establish contact with the girl, let her talk, after which you need to clearly express your dissatisfaction and propose a plan of action.
If a girl has done something too serious, then you should not forgive immediately, allowing her to realize her guilt. When you quickly forgive without ignoring, the lady will not draw conclusions.
If a girl ignores a man, then only he himself can determine whether he is worth pursuing her. Manipulation is a common behavior tactic for many women.
To understand how to correctly and clearly ignore your girlfriend, you need to determine the goal, methods and boundaries. Ignoring will help you get what you want if you approach it responsibly.
How does your ex feel?
A guy who ignores his ex very often does not stand the test of time. That is, he lacks the willpower and nerves to completely ignore the girl’s attempts to establish contact. Here it is worth remembering some significant differences in the behavior of men and women.
- If the young man showed lightness and carelessness when breaking up, this will certainly anger the girl. Finding herself “proudly” alone, she will still experience great curiosity about the life of her former lover. Therefore, you should ignore it for a certain time (let it suffer more), but do not overdo it.
- As a result of being ignored, your loved one increasingly has a desire to try to renew the relationship. Just remember that reconciliation may be short-lived, since not a single woman is ready to lower her self-esteem. She agrees to use this method only in order to then leave the man herself.
Why manipulation has a short-term effect
The method of ignoring with the aim of returning is, of course, aimed at your ex, is deliberate in nature and takes the form of manipulation. Most often, those who manipulate are those who know what impact it will have from their own experience. You don't show your suffering, your true feelings and emotions, and this begins to irritate and hurt your ex-girlfriend. She now wants to quickly end her suffering and resume her former relationship, return to the days of a happy time together. Therefore, manipulations are often short-lived.
