Is silent treatment the way out?

Anger can result in unwanted circumstances. Some individuals have therefore devised strategies to help curb their partners’ excesses. Many have suggested that ignoring a woman and her food is the best strategy for getting back at a nagging wife. Is the silent treatment or rejecting her food the best punishment for a wife?

Suleiman Abubakar, 40-year-old chemical engineer, says, “The era of hitting your partner out of anger is far gone. I hear some men say the best way to get back at her nagging is by hitting her. Really? There are better ways to get back at your partner than hitting her. I’ll suggest the best thing to do is to simply ignore her and if it’s getting too much, simply take a walk. Simply ignoring her and her food will go a long way in bringing her back to her senses.” 

Lawal Adesogan, 42-year-old doctor, also shares the same opinion with Suleiman. He says, “There is nothing that touches a woman like the silent treatment. It really gets to them, there is no point going into an argument with them and get yourself all angered to the extent you will be tempted to hit her. Nothing hurts a woman than to be ignored, deprived and avoided by her partner. That way, she will respect you and learn to resolve issues in a diplomatic way. But rejecting food is also bad as my mother always tell me never to reject my wife’s food because I am angry with her.”

Samira Ibrahim, 38-year-old lawyer, says times have changed and rejecting food isn’t the best option. “It will be unwise to compare the olden days to the present day. If you ignore your wife because you are angry with her, you are just giving her more time to relax. She will have more time to have fun and party with her friends. These days there are a lot of things to distract her and keep her busy while you as the man keeps hurting yourself because she will end up ignoring you completely. As a woman, I can tell you that the silent treatment doesn’t work all the time for women especially not in the generation of social media, Movie Magic, Zee World and Telemundo. Her laughter while watching all these will only annoy you. Find time to sit and talk about your issues, that’s the best and cheapest way to resolve issues.”

Samira’s friend, Zainab Habib, 39-year-old lawyer, agrees with her that the silent treatment doesn’t work for everyone. “If a man uses the silent treatment all the time, it becomes a known routine to the woman and she eventually gets used to it and this method will stop having any effect on her. As for rejecting food, most wives these days don’t care if their partners ignore their food. My advice is that there are different ways to get at your partner. For me, a man can’t use ignoring my food to get at me, but there are some one or two things he will do to me that will hurt me. My partner has a strategy to get me and it works perfectly all the time.”

Grace Emmanuel, 40-year-old civil servant, says, “Ignoring her or her food will do no one any good. When a misunderstanding comes up, the best thing is to keep quiet for a while and address the issue later when tempers are calm. That way, you will be doing it without any anger. This is the best option. Couples should develop the capacity to stomach each other’s excesses. Kids tend to also take after one of the parents. The kind of man or woman your child grows up to be has a lot to do with what they learn from you. Rejecting meals and refusal to fulfill one’s marital obligations is not acceptable in the eyes of our creator.”