How to Confront Someone Giving the Silent Treatment

Relationships are tricky whether they are between family or friends. One day everything is great and the next you find yourself on the end of the silent treatment. There are several things you can do when this happens, but it is possible to make a bad situation worse so you have go about confronting someone carefully.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Give it a day or two to be sure you are just not being over sensitive. It is possible the person is having a bad day and the silent treatment isn’t anything but that the person is preoccupied with his own problems.
2. Be sure you are the only one getting the silent treatment. If you see the person with others and everything seems to be fine with them, then you can conclude that it is you the person is ignoring and he’s not just having a bad day.
3. Find a quiet place away from other people to confront the person about why they are giving you the silent treatment. You don’t want to come off too strong so you may just ask if you have done something wrong or if there may be something you can do to fix the situation.
4. Listen to the person’s response. If they don’t want to talk to you then just walk away, if they do then respond to what they tell you. It could be a very simple misunderstanding or even something that someone else said you said, which you didn’t.
5. Try not to get too upset about the situation, after all if the person doesn’t want to be friends with you anymore there isn’t much you can do about it. However, give it a chance, it may take a little while before the person is ready to let you back in. Of course, by that time you may not want to be friends with them, especially if they won’t explain what it was that led to the silent treatment in the first place.
6. Move on with new people if the person isn’t interested in being friends with you any longer. There are plenty of people who will value your friendship.

Tips & Warnings

• It hard to move on if you are getting the silent treatment from someone in your family. Try to not only confront the person but to also press harder for the reason for the silent treatment.
• When you confront someone, you should never be aggressive. You aim is to find out what happened--especially if you value the person’s friendship--not get into more of an argument.