A study led by Paul Schrodt at the Texas Christian University has found that nothing good ever comes from giving your partner the silent treatment.
You may think you’re proving some sort of point, but you’re actually just messing up your relationship and damaging your own health.
From 1987 to 2011, researchers looked into the relationship patterns of 14,000 participants.
While it’s no shock that the silent treatment just leads to more communication issues, it’s also to blame for lowered satisfaction within the relationship and dwindling intimacy.
Because who wants to be intimate when they’re so much cold-shoulder nonsense going on? Make-up sex may be a blast, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it saves your intimacy with that quick romp.
In addition, the silence treatment can also mean psychological issues for the one doling out the silence. Urinary, bowel and erectile dysfunction aren’t that far away when you ignore your partner.
So yes, you just might be able to blame your constipation on how your treat your partner after an argument. This is great news for the laxative business, but not so great news for your intestines.
As Dr. Schrodt told Salon, “It’s the most common pattern of conflict in marriage or any committed, established romantic relationship. And it does tremendous damage.”
The more this way of dealing with disagreements becomes a pattern, then the more “one or both partners experience heightened levels of anxiety or may use more aggressive forms of behavior.”
Ultimately, it’s a vicious cycle, and one that must be stopped if you want to save your relationship.
Schrodt suggests a way to battle this by having both partners to agree to a “time out,” so each person can calm down before getting back into it again.
He also stresses avoiding accusatory language and trying your best to be understanding, seeing things from both perspectives. It might be hard in the heat of the moment, but if your relationship is important to you, you’ll make the effort.
Relationships aren’t easy, but for all the trouble they can be, it’s worth it for all the good stuff.
If that isn’t reason enough, then avoiding constipation should definitely convince you to try another method when it comes to dealing with relationship conflict.
Source: magazine.foxnews.com