Silent treatment

The silent treatment is refusing to talk to someone who wants to communicate, usually after conflict or hurt. It can be a protective shutdown or a way of punishing and controlling.

The longer explanation

Wikipedia summarises couple therapist Figs O'Sullivan: silence can range from a protective survival response, to a learned habit, to intentional, sustained manipulation meant to wear the other person down. The Gottman Institute describes stonewalling as the listener withdrawing during a discussion because they feel overwhelmed or physiologically flooded. Stonewalling is closely related and often looks the same from the outside. What separates the cases is purpose and length: is the silence a way to cope, or a way to make you give in?

Example

After an argument they don't answer for three days, then act as if nothing happened.

What it is not

One quiet evening, a pause to cool down that is announced and ended, or a request for space with a time to talk again isn't the silent treatment.

Online use vs research use

"Narcissist silent treatment" is mostly survivor-community language for silence used to punish. It isn't a research term, and the research on silence is about behaviour, not about types of people.

Avoidant or narcissist?

Online, "avoidant stonewalling" means silence from overwhelm, and "narcissist silent treatment" means silence used to punish and make you chase. From the outside they can look identical. Two questions help: does the silence end on its own so you can talk calmly, or only when you apologise or give in? And is it paired with blame and control, or with visible discomfort and retreat? Avoidance is protection; abuse is control, and the two can occur together. One silence can't tell you which. A 2025 meta-analysis (Mohay et al.) reported that vulnerable ("covert") narcissism links most strongly with preoccupied (anxious) attachment, moderately with fearful, and only weakly with dismissive; grandiose narcissism wasn't linked to attachment style. It's correlational, and it describes groups, not any one ex.

Silence isn't an answer. I'm not chasing it.