If you have ever experienced the silent treatment from the narcissist, you may not only wonder how long it will last, but whether this is the permanent discard. Will the silent treatment ever end, or has the narcissist decided to discard you for good? In their favorite game of control and manipulation, the narcissist wants you to always feel uncertain in your life so you can be easier to control. The uncertainty they fabricate is to activate your emotions, which are uncomfortable to feel, and you then are more likely to apologize to ease the tension. Not only is the silent treatment disorienting enough, but you also don’t know if this is a temporary discard or permanent.  Today, I will discuss the difference between the silent treatment and the permanent discard and what you can do to help relieve your own anxiety during the waiting game the narcissist has placed you in.

The silent treatment is meant to control the situation. The person who has gone silent has done this to manipulate the situation and will stop giving you the silent treatment when they think you have learned your lesson and will change your mind on what upset them to begin with.  The silent treatment is 100% about control. The narcissist who has become silent isn’t silent to gather their thoughts or step away to prevent emotions from running high.  They have become silent because the power differential is not in their favor, and they can’t handle this. 

When the narcissist goes silent, they want to ensure their partner starts to feel insecure, uncertain, and starts to think about how they are the problem.

The silent treatment is a type of discard, but it is a temporary discard. But while temporary, the actual time frame is unknown.   The most difficult part of the silent treatment is that there is no way to know how long it will last.  The silent treatment will end when the narcissist allows it to end.  The narcissist is in complete control of the silent treatment.  It may last hours, days, months, years, or even decades.  While the narcissist is in control of how long the silent treatment lasts, they don’t even know themselves how long that is.  The silent treatment will end when they have a sufficiently full narcissistic supply. 

By nature of the silent treatment being intended to be temporary, this means the narcissist keeps you in their back pocket and accessible when they are ready to end the silent treatment. The silent treatment isn’t meant to be permanent because the narcissist still sees you as a potential source of supply and they don’t want to cut you off completely. 

So, even a silent treatment that lasts decades is different from the final discard.

As the name suggests, to discard means to get rid of something that you no longer have use for, or value.  The narcissist can only refill their supply so many times from the same person before it will eventually run out and you must be replaced.  This is when the discard phase happens.  The narcissist can no longer see you as a source of supply, so they have no more need for you.  Remember, you were only in the life of the narcissist because it somehow benefited them. When you no longer provide benefit, they see no more need for you and the discard happens. 

To complicate things, during the silent treatment the narcissist could decide to discard you. This will most likely happen if they find another source of supply and no longer need to keep you close by as a source of supply should they need it. 

While the discard can be freeing in many ways, if you haven’t yet understood that you have been discarded it can feel like the never-ending uncertainty of the silent treatment.  During this time, there may be high anxiety and stress which starts to wear on you physically and mentally. 

If you are trying to figure out whether you are getting the silent treatment, or have been discarded, ask yourself why it matters to you.  Do you really believe the narcissist will return later wanting to be a better person because they have been thinking of how horrible they are and taking responsibility for their actions? Of course this isn’t how the narcissist spent the time apart.  They didn’t think of you in any positive way.  Instead, they confirmed to themselves how you are the problem and if you didn’t do a myriad of things then they wouldn’t have to teach you a lesson by not talking to you.  While you are wondering when the narcissist will talk to you again, they are validating to themselves that you are the problem, and they are not.

So, instead of asking yourself the impossible to answer question of whether this is a permanent discard, instead use your mental and emotional energy on working on yourself so if the narcissist does come back, you will believe in yourself enough to know that you don’t need them back in your life just for them to again decide to give you the silent treatment or the final discard when it is most convenient for them.