Questioning the Silence
Many of our victims find the implementation of a silent treatment one of the most troubling and upsetting manipulations that is applied. In part, it is its sheer simplicity that has such an effect. We do not have to expend much energy, we can implement it in an instant and it is something which is used by all three schools of narcissist, though of course it is the calling card of the passive aggressive Mid-Range narcissist. This oft used tactic of ours leaves people bewildered, hurt and upset. Whether it is a present silent treatment where we act as if you are invisible even though we are in the same room as you or an absent silent treatment where we disappear without notice and to who knows where, you are left trying to contact us, worried, angry and frustrated.
Accordingly, this gives rise to those who have been affected by those silent treatments and those still suffering the iciness of their implementation now having a number of questions about this silent killer. Here are some of the main questions and the answers you require.
How long will a silent treatment typically last?
This depends on whether it is a present silent treatment or an absent one. The former will last for a shorter duration. It may just be half an hour, it may be a few hours. It is rare for a present silent treatment to extend into the next day following an overnight hiatus, but it can happen. The reason it usually does not is that because of our tendency to compartmentalise when sleep intervenes it is as if the reset button has been pressed. We rise and leave behind what had happened yesterday and we will greet you as if nothing has happened. You can therefore usually rely on the fact that it most cases the present silent treatment, unpleasant as it is, will only last until we fall asleep.
A present silent treatment may well end before that because its primary purpose is to gain fuel from you. We want you to follow us around, repeatedly asking us what is wrong, we want you upset, we want you demanding answers, flapping about us and apologising for things you have not done. It is all fuel and once we feel fuelled then we will snap out of the silent treatment and speak to you, lapping up the relieved fuel that you provide to us since it is at an end. Usually the silent treatment will be applied because you have wounded us and therefore it will take until the wound has healed and the ignited fury has abated before the silent treatment will end. Accordingly, if you lay on the fuel thick and fast, the silent treatment is likely to end sooner.
With the absent silent treatment, this serves a dual purpose. Firstly it is to gain fuel but it is also used to allow us to spend time with or cultivating through telephone calls and texts a prospective replacement for you. The dual provision of fuel from you as the worrying incumbent primary source and the secondary source (or sources) which we are engaging with should result in any wound we have sustained being addressed fairly quickly. However, the absent silent treatment will continue because of the need to interact with other sources, most notably the one which is being cultivated as a replacement.
You should also keep in mind that if your narcissist is a Mid-Ranger or a Greater, then the absent silent treatment will lengthen each time it is used. If it was three days last time, it will now be more than three days. This is done in case you become complacent and think
“Oh he has gone off on one of his sulks. They usually last a weekend. I will just get on with things until he returns.”
accordingly, if you are not trying to contact us, then we will push the silent treatment for a longer period so you become concerned and begin to think
“It is four days now, he has never done this before. I should find out if he is okay.”
and thus you contact us and begin to fuel us once again.
How long do we expect the victim to run after us?
This is a straightforward one to answer. We expect you to run around after us at all times. You belong to us and you are under our control and obligated to us. We expect you to be texting and calling us, asking our friends where we are, trying to locate us, appearing at our house (if we do not live with you) knocking on the door and doing all you can to speak to us. We regard you as the ones who are in the wrong and you are obliged to chase after us in the forlorn hope of putting matters right.
What happens if the victim stops his or her reaction to the silent treatment?
This is certainly the way to deal with a present silent treatment. If you do not react to it and get on with something else, we see that it is not working and as a consequence we will halt the present silent treatment. In some instances this will cause us to shift tack and seek to draw positive fuel from you and therefore we will be pleasant to you. We may completely forget we have just been stood glaring at you as we lay on the charm again, but not reacting can cause this shift in our response.
Alternatively, we will just move to a different manipulation in order to draw the fuel from you because the wound that you have caused has not yet been addressed. The nature of the manipulation may increase in intensity. On other occasions your refusal to provide fuel (either from the present silent treatment and/or the shift to a different manipulation) will cause us to withdraw and seek fuel elsewhere. Thus you may find that there is an absent silent treatment instead.
If you do not react to an absent silent treatment, we will soon come slinking back. Whilst there may be a prospective primary source to court, we also want you chasing after us and as a consequence of that if you are not repeatedly calling us or trying to reach us, after a day or two of not hearing from you, we will want to know what you are doing. We have a need to know what is happening because we equate knowledge with control. This means that once you stop chasing us, we want to know why you are not doing so. Your halting your chasing will not cause wounding because we have gained fuel from the other sources we are interacting with and instead we want to return like the regal monarch we believe we are, sweeping back in and expecting you to fall to your knees in grateful deference to us.
Accordingly, if you want to bring an absent treatment to an end, simply do not react. Do not chase after us, do not ring or text, hard as it may be and we shall re-appear soon enough. You have stopped providing fuel and we want to know why.
Do we expect the victim to remain faithful even though they have not heard from us in weeks?
But of course. You are our property. It is perfectly permissible for us to vanish and gad about with other people and ignore our commitment to you, but you are not allowed to seek comfort and solace anywhere else. This again accords with our sense of compartmentalisation. We will carry on with what we want to do and expect time to stand still with you so that when we do decide to reappear, everything should be as we left it.You are bound to us and expected to respond when we return to you, lavishing us with positive fuel in accordance with our inflated sense of importance.
Do we think about you during an absent silent treatment?
We do of course when you are contacting us because we are drinking up the Proximate Fuel from the emotional content of your text messages, voice mails and seeing you knocking haplessly at the front door as we stand watching you through the spy hole. We also gain Thought Fuel from considering that you are missing us, wondering where we are, crying yourself to sleep and so forth.
Even if you fail to respond during an absent silent treatment and we are engaged with other sources, we will be wondering why you are not responding. This is not a discard, hence there is no deletion of you from our minds, but rather the need to be considering what you are doing for the purposes of both fuel and control.
What if the tables are turned and you give us the silent treatment?
This is ignoring us. We hate that. This is a criticism, we are wounded and our fury will be ignited. The Lesser will lash out at you to break the silence, the Mid-Range will dole out the pity plays and the guilt trips to break it and the Greater will lay on the charm. If you resist any of these responses we will be forced to withdraw and seek fuel from another source to address the wound that you have caused through ignoring us as a consequence of your silent treatment.
20 thoughts on “Questioning the Silence”
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It’s Domestic Abuse and Domestic Violence. Why do victims have to create campaigns against Domestic Violence because Evil in the flesh is walking around, fornecating with other Evils and this is where we are in this world, today. How unfair it is to the good things that still excistl, in this world. How cruel is this world? VERY…..
I thought of you today, HG. Someone crafted a beer named Silent Treatment. Supposedly made in Gurnee IL. Made me laugh loud enough for the stocker to give me a strange look. No, I did not purchase any.
So, after this blog – I’m thinking it will be really great if another/future hoover/s happen, so that I can continue to ignore.
…”Thus you may find that there is an absent silent treatment instead”, ok, HG, this is somewhat oxymoronic to me, nevertheless I think I understand… there isn’t a silent treatment per se.. but the appliance is not aware of “the silent treatment”.. just that they have been abandoned – but then the Narc is back so it isn’t a ST.
That said, totally ironic, I now have handbook to Narcs.. could have used the heads up playbook and you would have saved me so much grieve and pain… and I will never be an appliance again
… blinking light, so just move on.. nothing to see here
I so needed to read this!!! Once again thank you HG. What is the longest you gave an absent silent treatment?
5 weeks.
HG,
After a horribly, drama ridden discard, which appears to be final, there hasn’t been any contact in over weeks. (this is the longest it’s ever been) I’m sure he has someone else, and I realize he may come back, but how long will it take? I usually chased after him or he would text, call or email me. None of that is happening this time. Am I in the clear for a while? Can I relax? I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think he is between a mid-range and a Greater.
No such thing as a final discard. His hoover depends on various factors which have been explained many times on the blog KW. It is too early to relax. If you want to know what he is and the likelihood of how he will respond, this is best suited to the detail of a private consultation, details of which can be found in the menu bar.
Hello, Everyone. I guess you could call me a newbie here. I’m Lacey (not my real name). I stumbled upon this website after trying to find something, anything, to read, in trying to help myself make sense of what has happened to me. I’ll briefly share my story. I am not soliciting advice but hey…if anyone has any, I am all ears and listening.
I’ve spent the last day or so reading lots of content here. Almost everything I have read here applies to my situation. I find myself nodding my head, bursting into tears and saying “yep. this” and then nodding and crying some more. I even doubted it all at first, being in denial like “no way this cannot be happening, he had to have been genuine and loved me….it all seemed to real to me”. The swooping in out of nowhere, the infatuation, the “I love you, you’re my soulmate” after a week of chatting….and so on. Ironically, he started out as a casual friend I did not know much about (a friend of a friend). Long after the fact, I later learned from the other friend that he tried the “swooping in” BS with her too and she cut him off at the knees and he politely backed off. Which again doesn’t make sense to me. Does every “conquest” for “fuel” always reciprocate? Or do you get a few “duds” here and there who do not succumb to the seductive charm? Everyone says what a nice guy he is. An avid and respected member of the community, goes to church every week, has a wife and kid, the perfect family life. Yet beneath all that is a serial cheater. And from what I read and apply here….a narcissist.
But yeah….without sharing every sordid detail…the “proverbial shoe” of my situation and story of how I got caught up in all this definitely fits. The intense worship and being swept away so quickly, the insane sex, the constant attention….then the giant step backwards….withholding sex, standing me up for plans (on my dime)…the disappearing acts and so on. And now I know I have been discarded. And it keeps happening. After reading through the descriptive info, the cycle, all the articles here and applying it to how the last roller coaster of the year has played out you’d think I’d have realized it all sooner. I cannot say how glad I am to have found this place. I am that person that fell for the BS, hook line and sinker.
Right now it’s been 3 weeks of silence. After an entire week of me “fueling” him with texts and phone calls missing him (and either no answers or one word answers in response) I had an anxiety attack and backed off. I figured I’d wait for him to reach out to me first. I figured if he wanted me he would reach out. Then I read all of this and realize the game now. I was just feeding him. The silence has not really been “no contact” since neither of us have blocked each other on text or social media platforms. I guess I don’t want to give him up any more than he wants to keep me in his supply closet for later. But it’s been quiet and it’s killing me. That I miss and want him so much. How one person can affect me so much.
However there is just ONE thing that just does not make sense to me. And that is as follows: When I pinpointed the latest “discard” about to happen…I told him “but I am in love with you” (like it was going to make a damn difference or something) and his reply was nasty and cold when he said “You are to STOP telling me that you are in love with me. I will no longer reply to or acknowledge that statement”. This contradicts everything I have read. Doesn’t he WANT me to be in love with him? Doesn’t that give him his needed “fuel”? Why would he fly off the handle at that?
Anyway, thank you for reading if you got this far. I look forward to continuing to read the content here. I only hope it continues to help me try and make sense of everything.
Not when you are being devalued, your love (which is positive fuel) is deemed stale and he gets more out of drawing negative fuel (by hurting you, making you upset and/or angering you).
An old school mother who has raised several of these Ns is quite adept at controlling the coterie with a few tricks of her own.
Another valuable article that’s very helpful to anyone experiencing this dance. Thank you HG for all you do. You truly make this an invaluable learning experience. Much appreciated!
You are welcome The Bride. You aren’t Uma Thurman are you?
Hahaha HG unfortunately no celebrity status for me, I hate to disappoint. But left for dead comatose Super Empath turned Supernova definitely so. Here to learn the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique from Master Pai Mei LOL
Shame but your response amused nevertheless.
Okay so this is precisely what I’ve been wondering. I escaped and had him served with papers while I was there (teehehee😈) so lawfully he can not come back on my property. He is blocked from my phone but my email isn’t just in case by some slight chance he may want to check on his child (which he knows) and he hasn’t. Haven’t heard from him in 4.5 months aside from the Facebook status and the note he left on a gift receipt for a car seat. Is this a silent treatment, HG? Or is he just gone? I like to be able to classify things 😂
The details required to explain the position concerning a personal situation is best suited to a personal consultation PSPK.
Hey HG I’ve missed you ! 🤗🤗 and I got you !
Hi H.G.
In the above article you state, “We do not have to expend much energy. . . ” as I have seen stated in so many of your books and articles, I am puzzled as to what you mean by “energy”. I know that the acquisition of fuel takes up most of the time but I would really appreciate you explaining what this means to those like you.
Thank you Sir:)
Energy as in effort.
This tactic, by far, was the absolute worst and most cruel for me. The more I begged for mercy, the more deafening the silence. Then I searched “silent treatment”, and this was when the reality set in. Even years later, I’m still shocked…