When silence is not golden

02/04/2009| IslamWeb

BY Nasiha Ahmad

When someone says something mean to us, we are told that we should ‘turn the other cheek’. When we are angry and burn to say something mean to someone, we are told that if we don’t have something nice to say, we shouldn’t say anything at all. We are taught to bite our lips and hold our tongues whenever we feel anger brewing and frustration frothing; silence is better than lashing out. We are taught from a young age that silence is golden.

But there comes a time when silence can sting more than the bite of even the harshest words or wound more than the sharpest knives. When the silence is fueled by rage and held over by grudge, that silence is lethal. And unfortunately, many women know this ‘silent treatment’ all too well. Admittedly, many women have experienced this silent treatment from both ends—the receiving end and the giving end.

The silent treatment simply means: abstinence from speech. But it is sometimes accompanied by a cold, malicious, or indifferent air that begets not mere lack of words but also intent to neglect or hurt.

Silence between spouses

 

Men and women handle conflict differently. While most men may get angry and storm out of the house, yell or raise their voices, or worse yet lift a hand, women tend to shut down and clam up. Many of them resort to the silent treatment. When things don’t go the way a wife may want them to, she may decide that, rather than fighting with her husband, she will choose to avoid him, ignore him, and refuse to talk to him. She gives him the cold shoulder, rolls her eyes at him, all the while maintaining order in the house, taking care of the children, cooking meals, etc. How is this possible? Oh, it is possible, and quite probable in many households.

Someone once gave me some premarital advice: “Don’t have any expectations.” What she meant was: if we have expectations and they don’t come to fruition, we will be disappointed and upset. Then we will lash out in one way or the other. Most women don’t ‘lash out’ with words, they withdraw and ‘expect’ that the other person should just know what is wrong.

Take for example a routine wedding anniversary. A woman might ‘expect’ something special, but her husband may be pragmatic and present her with something practical, or worse yet, nothing at all. Now, she is not speaking to him. He doesn’t understand why. Most of the women who know her know exactly what she is feeling; many who are reading this may even have experienced this same thing.

The problem arises when incidents like the one above happen and we shut down and stop talking. We get angry and instead of explaining ourselves or demanding an explanation, we pout and expect that our husbands should have known better. But this silent treatment is poisonous to a marriage. It is like an iceberg between a husband and wife; it creates a rift between them that, even if time repairs it, another rift arises and the new one seems even greater and wider than the first. Because, once a woman gets into the habit of using the silent treatment, it becomes her easiest and most common weapon of choice. And it is this weapon that she may use in all her dealings with all her other relationships, as well.

Spiteful silence among sisters

 

Women are known to have the ability to share the strongest of bonds between one another. They can be the dearest of friends, maintaining everlasting friendships that endure years of happiness and tears. But during those times, some of those friendships encounter episodes of breakup. Unlike other breakups that might result in arguments and fights, many breakups in adult female relationships end due to the simple but significant silent treatment. This lack of speech speaks volumes in that it says more than words ever could. A woman knows that being overlooked or ignored by a friend is far worse than a battle of words.

Recall a time for instance when you might have been in school (high school or college) and suddenly some of your friends decided that they didn’t want to be your friends anymore. They began to ignore you and shrug off everything that you said. What you said and what you did made no difference; they didn’t care about you anymore and you didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because you offered one friend help with her homework but not the other or maybe you called one girlfriend the night before but not the other. It could be anything or really nothing at all. The reason is insignificant, but the consequence is astronomical. The point is that the result is a form of silent treatment that is detrimental to all involved.

A double-edged sword

 

Silent treatment is a double-edged sword: the one who remains silent and the one who bears the silence both suffer. Obviously, the one who is made to bear the silence is ‘punished’ because she is shunned, ignored, neglected and overlooked. That person ironically becomes de-objectified; it is almost as if she no longer exists. She is made to feel invisible and possibly worthless, or at the very least not worthy of being friends with the other person in question.

At the other end of the sword, the one doling out the punishment suffers (even if she doesn’t realize it at the time) because giving someone silent treatment would require from one perseverance, dedication, and persistence in something mean, spiteful, and vengeful— nothing from which anything good could result. This kind of silent treatment would drain a person’s emotional energy; trying to be that mean to someone that one cared about only days earlier takes some getting used to. Though we may convince ourselves that we don’t care, in our heart of hearts, we too (as the giver of the silent treatment) would have to acknowledge the loss of this friendship that we are shunning.

In other words, it takes a lot of work and effort to ignore someone so insistently; it is not easy to hurt someone so deeply without saying a word or raising a hand. Great effort must be exerted in making sure that the recipient knows that we are ignoring her, that we are avoiding her.

The danger lies in how long we may continue this grudge that fuels our silence. If we get used to being silent and ignoring a particular friend for long enough, that friend no longer remains a friend and we can officially say that we have lost her. Here lies our demise. Islam actually outlines a three- day limit after which time anger must subside. Then, the two estranged people must greet each other again: “It is not permissible for a Muslim to be estranged from his brother for more than three days, both of them turning away from one another when they meet. The better of them is the one who is first to greet the other.” (Bukhari)

According to the above hadeeth, one would assume that the two parties are in conflict, but with silent treatment, most often only one party has an issue with the other. Even in such cases, the ruling would likely apply; either the one being ignored should try to make amends with the woman who is angry and try to get her to speak and figure out what exactly is wrong, or the one who is silent should finally speak and make peace with her friend before it is too late...

The Prophet said, “Whoever forsakes his brother for a year, it is as if he had shed his blood.” [Al-Bukhari] Can we imagine this happening in our own lives? Of course, if enough time has elapsed and we haven’t spoken with someone for long enough, a year could easily go by before you know it. In fact, it is quite easy. If someone began silent treatment with you, in the beginning you might try to figure out why, but if this comes to no avail, you would probably give up trying and just think, “Oh well, if she doesn’t want to talk to me or be my friend, forget it.” And then you really would forget about it, as might she. But that would probably be a friendship lost for a potentially petty reason, and with a potentially potent consequence, given the above hadeeth. In most books, it is not worth it.

THE SOLUTON

1. Find a solution! Rather than giving silent treatment or allowing someone to give it to you, identify and then solve the problem instead of perpetuating it. Talk things through and come to some sort of solution, compromise, or agreement.

2. If you can never have a discussion again to actually work it out (let us be realistic; sometimes, it really just doesn’t work out) at least try to be ‘the bigger person’ and say your salams first. Then you can walk away civilly without any feelings of guilt.

3. Don’t start. Avoid giving anyone the silent treatment in the first place. For some, it is hard not to, but try to avoid being silent and rather just say what is on your mind instead of shutting someone out of your life. If we can nip any problems before they grow into big ones by talking them through, we can avoid having to give anyone the silent treatment.