Why No Contact Doesn't Work

Ever thought the old 'no contact' rule was a surefire way to win back a separated spouse? Be prepared for a reality check as we shine a light on the flaws of this manipulative tactic. We dissect the key role that secure attachment and healthy communication play in a marriage rather than resorting to emotional manipulation.

We'll also be introducing you to the concept of SMART Contact™, an antidote to the marital challenges you've been battling. Step into an enlightening discussion on how altering your communication styles and behaviors can help avoid pushing your spouse further away, and how essential it is to maintain open communication in testing times. To equip you with the right tools, we reveal our 'SMART Contact™ Toolkit, a guide to communication and conflict de-escalation. Whether your marriage is on the rocks or you're simply looking to enhance communication, we promise you'll find wisdom and practical advice in our conversation.

Relationship Radio is hosted by CEO of Marriage Helper, Kimberly Beam Holmes, and founder of Marriage Helper, Dr. Joe Beam.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

We occasionally hear people asking a question about what kind of contact should I have with my spouse if we're separated, and they then say we saw online somewhere that somebody said that the best way to do that is to have no contact, in other words, don't contact them whatsoever, just leave them out there, and that somehow that's going to trigger within them loneliness where they're going to wind up missing me to the point where they will start making the contact. But I actually made that occur by not giving them any contact until they could find out just how bad they hurt without me. Actually, I think that's not very wise. Let's talk about it. I'm Dr Joe Bean with Mary Jo. This is Kimberly Holmes, our CEO. We've heard about that no contact thing for years and years, haven't we?

Speaker 2: 1:26

Yeah, I think it's been around a while.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Isn't that basically a form of manipulation?

Speaker 2: 1:30

That's how I view it for sure, because the whole premise of it is withhold something from someone else so that they will begin to feel a certain way about you and come crawling back, to which then you can change your ways and keep them. It's like a bait and switch.

Speaker 1: 1:47

Almost. I've often asked people if you have to manipulate your spouse to come back. If they do come back, how do you keep them? Are you going to continue to manipulate all the way down the road? And if you think about this, no contact, it's worked off for premise. The premise is my spouse will miss me. My spouse will feel badly because he or she doesn't have any contact with me and therefore I can do this and it will have the effect on my spouse because my premise is deep down inside they still are crazy about me and that's why it's going to hurt so bad. That premise is possible, but not necessarily probable.

Speaker 2: 2:25

Yeah, yeah, I mean. The old saying is absence makes the heart grow fonder. And when our habits change or our routines change to where we were talking to this person every day and now for a period of time we're not, then yes, there may be, depending on the person and the situation, some aspects of man like I wish I would hear from them. Why aren't they contacting me back? But many times people are thinking I'm glad I'm getting a break from this crazy person. Thank goodness they've stopped contacting me.

Speaker 1: 2:59

Leave me alone Actually give a little hint as to how old I really am. About 50 years ago is when I started changing that phrase, and I'm going to say it this way absence makes the heart grow fonder, or someone else, because, unless we are in love with a fantasy or clinging to a memory, the people we develop love for are the people with whom we interact.

Speaker 2: 3:27

And with whom we trust are going to be there for us no matter what, not leave us high and dry to get us to realize the terrible things we've done and change our ways. That's not really how secure attachment works. It's not really how a lot of the positive and healthy things in a marriage relationship should work.

Speaker 1: 3:47

A lot of our listeners know that my wife, alice and I are in our second marriage to each other. We were married 15 years the first time and then I divorced Alice. I actually left Alice for another woman. Thank God that did not work out, but back then of course that's what I wanted to work out. And then we've been married 36 years this time. So from the original marriage, which occurred in June of 1969, we've been married 54 years Off and on Give or take three.

Speaker 1: 4:15

Okay, you say, why are you bringing that up? Because when I was after I left Alice, I was happy that she wasn't contacting me Now. Admittedly, that was back in the 1980s and it was more difficult. No cell phones yet. They were just about to come out and we weren't doing the internet. You know, we didn't have email it's no texting, that kind of stuff which made it easier. But the more I pursued the thing that I knew deep down inside me was wrong. But what I really really wanted at the time the less contacts I had with Alice, the better, because it didn't bring about any of my guilt. And so if she had tried to contact me back then I would have reacted one way, but no contact was what I wanted and therefore that's what I got, but it did not help us move forward at all. It just left us to drift further and further apart. Well, because sometimes other people say this you need to contact them every single day.

Speaker 2: 5:14

Yeah, leave them a voicemail send them an email.

Speaker 1: 5:19

And we're saying that both those extremes are bad, Because if Alice had been doing that, of course she didn't have the ability because of technology, but if she'd been doing it back then it would have made me angrier with her. So no contact on her part gave me more permission to go further and further away. If she had been trying to contact me every day, it would have pushed me further and further away. So what do you do?

Speaker 2: 5:41

Well, that is the invention of smart contact. We I mean, this is what we began to see again like six, seven years ago, with what our clients were saying, and so our team realized, like there's a smarter way to do this, and so we called it smart contact and then, because I love an acronym, decided we can make this into an acronym, and now it is a trademarked process that we have smart contact.

Speaker 1: 6:07

And just one that you specialize in studying, so explain it to people.

Speaker 2: 6:11

So the idea here is to change your communication style with each other and change the way that you're approaching your spouse. That is inclusive of much healthier behaviors, and so the S in smart contact stands for stop pushing your spouse away, stop your push behaviors. We have a whole video on that on YouTube. So if you're watching this on YouTube, we'll definitely link to that. We'll also probably link to a podcast where we talk more about it If you're listening to this on a podcast.

Speaker 2: 6:37

But the basic premise of it is anything that is evoking a negative emotion within your spouse that is inadvertently or maybe very much advertently pushing them away. Those are the things you need to stop doing. This helps to calm the situation down. The M stands for manage business items together, and that doesn't necessarily mean an actual business or taxes or things like that, but it means manage talking to each other about things that are not emotionally charged. So don't start every conversation with when are you coming back? How could you be doing this to me? But instead find some neutral areas that you can use as conversation starters. That can help to rebuild the trust in having a good conversation with that that actually would matter to the other person.

Speaker 1: 7:22

So they're not saying, not thinking. I told you not to call me every day. You're calling because there's some reason.

Speaker 2: 7:28

Right, you're not calling to talk about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, unless they care.

Speaker 1: 7:34

Who are they? I have no, I'm kidding, right.

Speaker 2: 7:36

Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1: 7:38

So if you call to say, hey, our son's having a little bit of trouble with math, you think you can help with that Something. That's a real reason, not made up where that it doesn't appear that you're trying to manipulate them. It's a natural thing that you would talk with each other about.

Speaker 2: 7:52

Right, exactly. And then we go into the A, which is to allow your spouse to respond, because, again, under the managing of these business items, you're taking the negative communication pattern you used to have and you're trying to calm it down by using these non-emotionally charged questions, entry points. So you're going to allow your spouse to respond and just listen to what they say, even if it's not necessarily something that you want to hear you could ask them or contact them about. You know, our son got this back on the report card what are your recommendations on what to do to move forward? And maybe your spouse responds in something that's a bit hurtful and says you know he wouldn't be struggling with that if you wouldn't XYZ, do something to blame them. And while that's not ideal, you also don't have to enter into every argument you're invited to.

Speaker 2: 8:43

And so allowing your spouse to respond also means that you take the onus of not responding if it's not going to lead to a productive conversation, and so in that situation you could just simply not reply. Or you could simply reply saying you know, I think I'm going to get him into tutoring or something. That's just not continuing to emotionally charge it. But sometimes you might find that your spouse begins to open up and actually share about some more things how? Or ask you a question how's your day going? Here's some things I'm struggling with at work. And in that situation you want to allow the conversation to naturally and organically happen without bringing up emotionally charged issues and without entering push behaviors into it.

Speaker 1: 9:24

I've heard some of the folks that push the non-contact say and therefore if they call you don't answer, right Text you don't respond. We're saying be civil.

Speaker 2: 9:35

Yeah, exactly you never know.

Speaker 1: 9:37

And if they're calling you just to cuss at you, then sure hang up quickly. This is not a good conversation and you hang up but not responding to them actually stops all communication. It's not going to make them want you more, if they have. If what you're doing like they call and you never answer is evoking negative emotions within them, is pushing them further away. Now realize the premise. There is no. The fact that I'm not answering is going to make them want me more, and for some people maybe, but it's not smart.

Speaker 2: 10:07

No, it definitely does smart.

Speaker 1: 10:09

What's the R stand for? No.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Respond in a way that's calm and strong and gentle, which we kind of just covered in the last point. And then T is take it one day at a time, realizing you're going to screw up at some point.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Everybody does.

Speaker 2: 10:22

But that doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater. It doesn't mean you give up and say this isn't working at all. And don't we see that all the time? Someone will break smart contact. It'll set them two steps back and they'll say this isn't working, I'm going to try something else. It's like this can't not work, Like the smart contact in its whole premise, only leads to more healthy communication patterns.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Because it demonstrates respect.

Speaker 2: 10:45

Absolutely. Now. Does it mean it's going to force your spouse's mouth open for them to talk back to you? No, but what are you going to do other than this, like there's no other, there's no tactic, there's nothing? Well, that's not true. There is. You can begin, you know, pushing their buttons so that they will respond and say things to you you don't want them to say, and push them further away than you would want to. But that's not the goal we're trying to get to here. We're trying to help save the marriage and fix the communication pattern, and smart contact does is the framework that allows that to happen.

Speaker 1: 11:23

And so smart contact, basically, is a way to stop pushing your spouse away. It might pull them towards you, it may not, but you're a much better off to be in neutral territory than the territory where you're pushing the spouse further and further away, right and Kimberly. How do you find out more about smart contact?

Speaker 2: 11:42

We actually have an entire toolkit of how to. It's like the ultimate guide for communicating better with your spouse, and in it we teach about smart contact as well as a ton of other bonuses that we have in it. You can get access to the smart contact toolkit, where we go much more into this and all of the other bonuses that you get by going to marriagehelpercom slash smart, and the kicker here as well is that for a limited time it's also only $27. So be sure that you go there marriagehelpercom, slash smart, and begin doing and learning the things that you can do to really reignite and just completely change the communication you have in your marriage.

Speaker 1: 12:26

So this is the thing that you and I spent like three and a half hours recording and then you put extra stuff with it and it's only $27. I know how am I going to buy anybody a Christmas present.

Speaker 2: 12:37

We even included a new thing in there, like a supplementary material on how to de-escalate conflict, and yeah, so it's pretty cool, we're excited, awesome, yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:49

We'll be able to take advantage of that. If we can help you, we want to, because there's always hope. We look to see you on the next episode of Relationship Radio.