 Hey there everybody. Thanks for watching another video. I'm Rifka Slatkin. I'm Shlomo Slatkin. And for those of you that are listening on audio on our podcast Can This Marriage Be Saved, welcome to another great episode. Today we are going to talk about what to do when your wife won't talk to you. Whether she's giving you the silent treatment or you just have no idea what's going on but she is not responding to you, what can you do? So Shlomo, you're the marriage counselor. I'm your wife. Take it away. Yeah. When your spouse is not talking to you or giving you the silent treatment, it can be extremely uncomfortable to say the least. And it's always a question, what do I do? Do I reach out? Do I try to engage? Is it better just to give space? I think that you probably know in your history and your relationship how things have worked. You know, normally what happens when a person is in the space where they don't want to talk. So it could be, they're upset about something. They're not feeling safe. There could be a lot of anger pent up. So you have to know in the past what have you done that's been most successful. Sometimes it's better just to give a little bit of space until things cool off. At the same time, you know, trying to be friendly, trying to be nice, but not expecting any kind of change in return. And then for others, you may need to actually pursue your spouse and try to engage and ask them what they need and ask them if they want to talk. I'm just realizing that I think. What do I do with you? Okay. So I think you do that with me sometimes. I mean, I really, really try to never get in this, you know, state because with all the work that we've done on our marriage over the last almost 19 years, I know that, you know, it's not good to just give some of the silent treatment when you're angry and it's good to use your words and it's good to communicate in a safe way. But sometimes if I get extremely angry, I do know that like in that moment, I do not want to talk to you. And I know in the past, like that's when you started to sort of pursue me like, can I get you a hot drink? Would you like a tea? And then sometimes I just keep asking. And then it's like, I sort of melt because I can't resist like a hot cup of tea when I'm feeling very emotional and very moody. So I just realized I'm laughing because in the advice you're giving, it's kind of describing some personal. So spoken from experience, but it works. I mean, yeah, I find it's like, there's first of all to defend myself is not going to make it better. It's going to make it worse. So what I typically do is I try to, you know, kill with kindness and sense that doing acts of service is being kind, being nice, doing things, trying to go out of my way to be helpful with the hope that at some point the mood will change. And inevitably the mood does change. And it's important to realize that because usually people aren't going to give you the silent treatment permanently. Hopefully not. Yeah, hopefully not. Though it does sometimes happen. And when that's the case, I mean, ultimately, if you're in that situation, it's important to be able to work on your relationship and learn how to be able to communicate better. Because you don't want to get to a place where the silent treatment. So sometimes when I'm working with couples, they'll say, you know, since we've begun this process with you, you know, it used to be that we'd have, we have a fight and then, you know, we wouldn't speak for, you know, a week and now it's like, you know, two hours. So it's progress. So the idea is that working on your relationship, being able to work through the issues, learning how to communicate more effectively, learning how to feel heard and understood, helps change the dynamic so that you're not having these, you're not kind of acting out. Right. And if you're the person that is giving the silent treatment, ignoring your spouse, you know, for weeks on end, that's not okay. And if that's happening, you know, of course you have a reason to be angry and I'm sure, you know, whatever you feel, absolutely makes sense. But in the end, that behavior does not help you in the long run. And it behooves you to learn how to express your feelings in a safer way. But on the flip side, it can be hard because in the past, maybe, you know, the person listening hasn't listened to you in a way that made you feel safe. So it's kind of like a chicken or egg, you know, who acts first? You know, do I take a risk and share when my partner maybe is not going to respond in a safe way? You know, who should go first, I guess. That's why if you have a process, I mean, one of the things that I feel like we, because we, you know, when we did learn the Mago dialogue, when we first got, well, about 17 years ago, when we started going to counseling, you know, that gave us a tool so that we know if, and you know, that we know that we can have that to fall back on, or we know that we can know how to listen to each other or the person who is less triggered and kind of take the weight of the relationship at that moment. But if you don't have any support in that way, then it can become very challenging and it's confusing. But I would say it's always important for us, for everyone to be more conscious about their emotional reality, what bothers them and be able to articulate it in a safe way and be able to say what you're feeling as opposed to lashing out and lashing out in rage or anger or just ignoring the other person. It's not helpful in the long run for your relationship. It just, it kind of tears the relationship when you're having those, either the outburst or the ignoring this final treatment, the stonewalling. It really tears the relationship apart and, you know, you can keep fighting and coming back and coming back if you're really committed. But the less committed you are, it's going to be hard to give you that motivation to keep fighting and after a while you can get in one of these place where it's kind of just like, no, I love you, I care about you, but I'm not really so connected with you anymore because of all these repeated occasions where there's been this ignoring and silent treatment. So you're saying like over time this really is the type of thing that will eat away at a couple's connection and ability to connect. And so really a couple needs to learn these safe ways of communicating. The dialogue process that we're talking about, the method that we learned 17 years ago is called the Amago Dialogue. And we do talk about that in some of our past episodes, podcast episodes, as well as videos. If you have any questions, you can always reach us on our website, TheMarriageRestorationProject.com. You can contact us, you can ask us more about it. But when a couple meets with Shlomo, he leads them in this structured way of communicating and it's very safe because one person will share and the other person cannot respond. The other person merely reflects back what is being said until they have deeply heard it and understood it. And it's such a relief for couples because they don't need to have that going back and forth anymore or the stonewalling or the silent treatment, but they can both show up for each other in a way that is safe and communicative. And it's a game changer. So if you haven't looked into Amago Therapy, we definitely recommend that you do. We have tons of resources for you starting from free to our private couples retreats that Shlomo does online with couples. But we definitely have lots of options for you along the path. And even kind of a DIY course where you can actually see videos of us practicing the dialogue and kind of learn the steps on your own too. Yeah. So we hope this was helpful for you. If you're wondering what to do, if your wife won't talk to you. And you're just kind of walking on those eggshells, not really knowing what to do. Shlomo mentioned kind of killing with kindness, being the more mature one to show up and do some caring behaviors for the partner. And even if she doesn't respond. Just keep it up. And it can be a lonely path, but if you can be the one that's going to be the best that you can be in a relationship, you kind of hold the space for both of you until your partner kind of gets back on board. Yeah. And I think you can also say to her maybe a week later or a few days later when you're having maybe date night or it's a good spot. Say honey, you know, remember that time like we didn't speak for two days, like that made me feel really sad. And I'd really like to work with you so I can be a better husband to you. You know, would you consider going on a retreat with me like specifically our online couples retreat? Or, you know, would you consider working with the therapist to so we can work together so I can show up and be a better husband to you? That might work later, not obviously in the moment. And even if you're not trying to ask to go to therapy, just even I want to work on this with you. I want to be able to like this is really painful for me when you ignore me. And I want to understand what you need so that we don't have to get to this place. So what could I do to be able to be there for you when you're in that space? So we don't have to have that, you know, silent treatment. I think that's really helpful. So thank you. Thank you, Shlomo. Thank you, listeners. Thank you for listening to another episode of Can This Marriage Be Saved and watching videos over at the Marriage Restoration Project. We look forward to hearing from you and as always send in any questions that you'd like to cover us to cover for our future episode at themarriagerestorationproject.com. Take care. Bye-bye.