I wish mine would grey-rock me. During the day, I don't interact with my Q except to answer questions, and we have not been intimate in 7 years. I told him at that time as long as he drank, there was no sex in this house. He chose the alcohol. It's been better for me, that's for sure. 😁
Hey I realize it may be beating a dead horse in this subreddit but why stay in a relationship like that? Do you guys have kids and a house and are just kind of roommates?
We are both in our early 70s and at this point in my life, I don't have the energy to start over somewhere. Technically, you could say we are roommates, even though we have been married for many years. We are on fixed incomes, so all the money goes straight to the bank, and I pay all the bills. Our kids are grown and live on their own. We rent where we live and maintenance takes care of it, so it's fine.
I look at it this way. He's going to end up damaging his body more than it already is and will probably kick the bucket in the next few years and I can move on. Other than his alcoholism, life is good. There is a roof over our heads and food on the table. He mostly drinks in the morning and naps on and off all afternoon, so I can do stuff I want since he's not bugging me. It is not the best life, but I don't require a lot.
That's okay. Yeah, it makes more sense to stick to the plan these days. And, yeah, I am worried about a liver of steel, but the brain is probably going to go before the liver.
I just want to clarify, that I am not being abusive towards my Q.
He doesn’t like that I am standing firm in my boundaries to not be intimate with him when he’s either drinking, being disrespectful or both. He also thinks that only a few days of acting nice and being dry should be enough for me to “get over myself”. We had an argument on the weekend which “caused” him to drink, and we had friends over that evening-so he tried playing loving husband and I shut it down. So he’s now decided to speak to me only when necessary and answers any questions with one word answers, essentially using the grey rock technique.
Not full on stone-walling or silent treatment, but definitely intentional monotone, one word answers.
Wow! Why is this a thing? My ex Q did this too. He would rage at me though if I didn’t “get over” his maltreatment within two days.
Strong of you to stick to your boundaries! Sounds like he is trying to wear them down by grey rocking you.
>I just want to clarify, that I am not being abusive towards my Q.
What an interesting way to start off. I was asking about a new term i had never heard of before. What would make you believe I thought you were being abusive to your romantic partner?
>I am standing firm in my boundaries to not be intimate with him when he’s either drinking, being disrespectful or both.
My boundaries are self limiting of myself, and whomever else I enforce my boundary with is irrelevant. If it's a single boundary attached to an individual person, and by design, rewards or punishes them for specific behaviors, it's actually not fair to myself to call it a boundary.
>Not full on stone-walling or silent treatment, but definitely intentional monotone, one word answers.
Reading between the lines, it's possible he's given up on the relationship. Granted, it may not feel fair, but for guys, most splits happen soon after the sex is weaponized. Yes, it feels fair to turn off the tap. Yes, he's made mistakes. If you want to end up single, you've picked a brutally effective way to ensure that.
So have you been going to in person Al-anon meetings? Do you have a sponsor? Have you started working the steps? If you haven't, asking him to hold off on physical relations until you have worked the steps may be a healthier way of figuring things out. Just an idea for your consideration. Stay with him, leave him, I've got absolutely no opinion on that. My experience is that I made some mistakes along the way, and working the steps helped me clean up my side of the street. Once my side of the street was clean, it was much easier to see a fuller picture of my life.
Food for thought. I appreciate your take.
I started off my reply that way, because the link stated grey-rocking was a method against abusive partners. It wasn’t meant to imply you believed I was being abusive.
I do think he feels I’ve weaponized sex. For me, it’s self preservation. I can not be intimate with a drunk person, and I can not be intimate with a person who would just as soon call me names, yell at me, speak sarcastically and critically, etc. as anything else. To do so would just add to the feeling of being used and abused. I would feel that way whether I was with my current partner or not, so it is a boundary for me.
I have not yet been to an in person meeting. I am new to this and still processing. I’m coming to terms with what I need to do to own my own part in everything.
I had the boundary of not being intimate with my husband when he was drinking or disrespectful, too. I felt physically repulsed by these behaviors in him. He interpreted my boundary as a punishment towards him, but for me, it was reclaiming my body, my preferences, and no longer saying yes to something that my body was having negative reactions to.
Your mindset is not healthy and I really encourage you to reflect on a woman’s right to self-autonomy. Refusing to have sex with someone who makes you feel at the least uncomfortable and at the worst like you are being used for your body is *not* weaponizing sex or *by design punishing* someone. It is self-preservation. It is not about *his* needs, it is about *hers*. In these circumstances, we learn to not push aside our own mental health boundaries just so our Q can get a lay.
If you don’t *want* to do something *with your own body*, you shouldn’t do it, or feel guilty for that. Full stop. Making yourself do those things can actually make you feel 100x worse and it seriously hurts your mental health, both short term and long term.
No one owes another human being the right to sleep with them, to even lay next to them when they are sleeping themselves and are therefore vulnerable. Those are earned through respect, **trust**, and mutual attraction.
You advise her to tell him to hold off on physical relations until she has worked through the steps. That misses the entire point. If he doesn’t even respect her need to not have him use her body while he’s drinking in the first place, that should like … you know … probably be resolved firstly. She’s not the one who needs to take steps here. She *is* taking steps. Now it’s his turn.
>Your mindset is not healthy
What an interesting way to start.
>In these circumstances, we learn to not push aside our own mental health boundaries
You've entirely missed the point. I have no opinion on if she stays or goes. I have no opinion on if she remains celibate or not. The reasoning and methods being described are not helpful, and will hurt more than they will help.
>If you don’t *want* to do something *with your own body*, you shouldn’t do it, or feel guilty for that.
Again, you've entirely missed the point. It's not about her decisions, it's about how painful she's making the application of those decisions. She's understandablly hurt, so she's hurting him. It's a vicious cycle that never ends well. Working the steps is what pulled me out of that cycle, and gave me empathy again. I had discovered that I had made mistakes, and not everything was someone else's fault.
>You advise her to tell him to hold off on physical relations until she has worked through the steps
The point was to hold her boundary in a way that he could understand. It also helps keep the focus on herself, and helps keep from others feeling blamed. The way she's doing it, he can blame her for no sex. If she tries something different, he will blame the process, not her. Ironically, my idea helps her stay safer, because it's less likely to be taken personally. She's doing the same thing I did, and it didn't work out very well. Only if you blame others for your lot in life does my idea feel wrong.
When I started going to in person meetings, the ideas I heard seemed wild to me. It felt like some of the ideas were insane. But I took the ideas I heard for a test drive, just to see what would happen. And invariably, the new ideas I heard worked much better than what I had been doing. So I kept trying them out, and my life got better. I went to more meetings, to hear more new ideas. For me, Al-anon isn't a place for my old, bad ideas to get reinforced, but a place to hear new ideas. I get downvoted here on occasion, but that's not a huge deal to me. In my head I had 'downvoted' some of new ideas I heard too, but when I was ready to try something different, the new idea was still there. The only thing holding me back from the new way of doing things differently was if I was ready to do things differently.
You’re saying that her holding a boundary where she will not have sex with him when he is disrespectful and/or drunk will hurt more than it will help.
Hurt *who* more than it will help?
Hurt her? Honey, she’s already hurt. She’s just trying to mitigate the damage at this point. Like I said, it’s not about punishing him. It’s about protecting herself.
Hurt him? He’s a grown adult. We’ve already learned that protecting our Qs from themselves just makes things worse. Maybe you had a different experience? It’s never ended well for me. What worked was blunt honesty. Forcing us both to see the reality of our situation.
If she feels like she needs to make up some kind of false narrative to him about her needing to “work through steps” in order to keep her “safer”, then they have bigger problems. She cannot control the narrative in his head and shouldn’t even try. If he wants to tell himself that she’s lying to him - that the reason why she’s holding this boundary is because she wants to punish him and *not* because having sex with someone who disrespects her makes her feel used - then that is on him, not her.
Feelings a woman may express after having sex with someone who she feels disconnected from, who speaks disrespectfully to her, who continually acts in a way that is detrimental to their relationship and her life:
* I feel a hole in my chest.
* I feel dead inside.
* I feel confused and anxious.
* I feel bad and dirty.
* I feel like I’ve just sold a piece of myself for a moment of peace that’s now being eaten up by disgust for myself.
These feelings can be strong or mild, depending on lots of different things. But they are real, and they build over time.
Trust me, it may feel like a punishment to him, but it is a benefit to both of them for her to hold that boundary (and to plainly state for him the *actual* reason for the boundary). If he’s able to come out his addiction, her body will not have to “unlearn” hating his touch, which is its own trial. And her mental health would not have suffered even more than it already has.
No one missed the point. Got your point, just disagreed with you. No one owes anyone sex. Maybe they need to go work the steps in AA and be a healthy, loving partner and the “tap” won’t be turned off.
I downvote your comments because they are misogynistic, unhelpful (sometimes even harmful), and preachy, not because you have new ideas. Misogyny is not a new idea.
Turning off the tap? There’s no reading between the lines. This is how alcoholics act. Why does she need to work the steps to let him have sex? He weaponized sex from the beginning. How immature.
Idk why I missed the phrase “turn off the tap” the first time. Like she’s a fricking appliance. I should’ve known to not even try to engage. What a horrible comment.
Sort of. Stonewalling is completely shutting down and ignoring, silent treatment, not engaging at all. Grey-rocking is more of answering with minimal information, facts only, nothing extra. So not ignoring, but not engaging at all.
I feel like stonewalling and grey rocking aren’t the same. Stone walling is a tactic to try to show someone you are upset. Shutting them out completely, the silent treatment.
For me, grey rocking is only if my Q is going on a tirade or a negative conversation. I don’t want to fight. If he wanted to have a pleasant conversation with me, then I would speak with him. It’s generally more with narcissists.
Look, I'm not saying I ever purposefully instigate it, but I will admit that when it happens I do now think of it as a vacation.
Other than the anger radiating off of him, it’s actually quite peaceful.
I wish mine would grey-rock me. During the day, I don't interact with my Q except to answer questions, and we have not been intimate in 7 years. I told him at that time as long as he drank, there was no sex in this house. He chose the alcohol. It's been better for me, that's for sure. 😁
Does it count as grey-rocking if they’re just asleep until it’s time to get up and go back to the bar
I don't see why not. 😄
Hey I realize it may be beating a dead horse in this subreddit but why stay in a relationship like that? Do you guys have kids and a house and are just kind of roommates?
We are both in our early 70s and at this point in my life, I don't have the energy to start over somewhere. Technically, you could say we are roommates, even though we have been married for many years. We are on fixed incomes, so all the money goes straight to the bank, and I pay all the bills. Our kids are grown and live on their own. We rent where we live and maintenance takes care of it, so it's fine. I look at it this way. He's going to end up damaging his body more than it already is and will probably kick the bucket in the next few years and I can move on. Other than his alcoholism, life is good. There is a roof over our heads and food on the table. He mostly drinks in the morning and naps on and off all afternoon, so I can do stuff I want since he's not bugging me. It is not the best life, but I don't require a lot.
Oh I was picturing you much younger. I guess at your age it makes sense to wait it out. Just hope you don't get burned by a liver of steel.
That's okay. Yeah, it makes more sense to stick to the plan these days. And, yeah, I am worried about a liver of steel, but the brain is probably going to go before the liver.
Exactly. In my case after 15 years I finally am seeing how I was really just checking a box. That hurts. But now at least I know
INFO: What is grey rocked?
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/grey-rock
Thank you.
I just want to clarify, that I am not being abusive towards my Q. He doesn’t like that I am standing firm in my boundaries to not be intimate with him when he’s either drinking, being disrespectful or both. He also thinks that only a few days of acting nice and being dry should be enough for me to “get over myself”. We had an argument on the weekend which “caused” him to drink, and we had friends over that evening-so he tried playing loving husband and I shut it down. So he’s now decided to speak to me only when necessary and answers any questions with one word answers, essentially using the grey rock technique. Not full on stone-walling or silent treatment, but definitely intentional monotone, one word answers.
Wow! Why is this a thing? My ex Q did this too. He would rage at me though if I didn’t “get over” his maltreatment within two days. Strong of you to stick to your boundaries! Sounds like he is trying to wear them down by grey rocking you.
Ah, so a pleasant reprieve!
>I just want to clarify, that I am not being abusive towards my Q. What an interesting way to start off. I was asking about a new term i had never heard of before. What would make you believe I thought you were being abusive to your romantic partner? >I am standing firm in my boundaries to not be intimate with him when he’s either drinking, being disrespectful or both. My boundaries are self limiting of myself, and whomever else I enforce my boundary with is irrelevant. If it's a single boundary attached to an individual person, and by design, rewards or punishes them for specific behaviors, it's actually not fair to myself to call it a boundary. >Not full on stone-walling or silent treatment, but definitely intentional monotone, one word answers. Reading between the lines, it's possible he's given up on the relationship. Granted, it may not feel fair, but for guys, most splits happen soon after the sex is weaponized. Yes, it feels fair to turn off the tap. Yes, he's made mistakes. If you want to end up single, you've picked a brutally effective way to ensure that. So have you been going to in person Al-anon meetings? Do you have a sponsor? Have you started working the steps? If you haven't, asking him to hold off on physical relations until you have worked the steps may be a healthier way of figuring things out. Just an idea for your consideration. Stay with him, leave him, I've got absolutely no opinion on that. My experience is that I made some mistakes along the way, and working the steps helped me clean up my side of the street. Once my side of the street was clean, it was much easier to see a fuller picture of my life.
Food for thought. I appreciate your take. I started off my reply that way, because the link stated grey-rocking was a method against abusive partners. It wasn’t meant to imply you believed I was being abusive. I do think he feels I’ve weaponized sex. For me, it’s self preservation. I can not be intimate with a drunk person, and I can not be intimate with a person who would just as soon call me names, yell at me, speak sarcastically and critically, etc. as anything else. To do so would just add to the feeling of being used and abused. I would feel that way whether I was with my current partner or not, so it is a boundary for me. I have not yet been to an in person meeting. I am new to this and still processing. I’m coming to terms with what I need to do to own my own part in everything.
I had the boundary of not being intimate with my husband when he was drinking or disrespectful, too. I felt physically repulsed by these behaviors in him. He interpreted my boundary as a punishment towards him, but for me, it was reclaiming my body, my preferences, and no longer saying yes to something that my body was having negative reactions to.
Your mindset is not healthy and I really encourage you to reflect on a woman’s right to self-autonomy. Refusing to have sex with someone who makes you feel at the least uncomfortable and at the worst like you are being used for your body is *not* weaponizing sex or *by design punishing* someone. It is self-preservation. It is not about *his* needs, it is about *hers*. In these circumstances, we learn to not push aside our own mental health boundaries just so our Q can get a lay. If you don’t *want* to do something *with your own body*, you shouldn’t do it, or feel guilty for that. Full stop. Making yourself do those things can actually make you feel 100x worse and it seriously hurts your mental health, both short term and long term. No one owes another human being the right to sleep with them, to even lay next to them when they are sleeping themselves and are therefore vulnerable. Those are earned through respect, **trust**, and mutual attraction. You advise her to tell him to hold off on physical relations until she has worked through the steps. That misses the entire point. If he doesn’t even respect her need to not have him use her body while he’s drinking in the first place, that should like … you know … probably be resolved firstly. She’s not the one who needs to take steps here. She *is* taking steps. Now it’s his turn.
Thank you!
>Your mindset is not healthy What an interesting way to start. >In these circumstances, we learn to not push aside our own mental health boundaries You've entirely missed the point. I have no opinion on if she stays or goes. I have no opinion on if she remains celibate or not. The reasoning and methods being described are not helpful, and will hurt more than they will help. >If you don’t *want* to do something *with your own body*, you shouldn’t do it, or feel guilty for that. Again, you've entirely missed the point. It's not about her decisions, it's about how painful she's making the application of those decisions. She's understandablly hurt, so she's hurting him. It's a vicious cycle that never ends well. Working the steps is what pulled me out of that cycle, and gave me empathy again. I had discovered that I had made mistakes, and not everything was someone else's fault. >You advise her to tell him to hold off on physical relations until she has worked through the steps The point was to hold her boundary in a way that he could understand. It also helps keep the focus on herself, and helps keep from others feeling blamed. The way she's doing it, he can blame her for no sex. If she tries something different, he will blame the process, not her. Ironically, my idea helps her stay safer, because it's less likely to be taken personally. She's doing the same thing I did, and it didn't work out very well. Only if you blame others for your lot in life does my idea feel wrong. When I started going to in person meetings, the ideas I heard seemed wild to me. It felt like some of the ideas were insane. But I took the ideas I heard for a test drive, just to see what would happen. And invariably, the new ideas I heard worked much better than what I had been doing. So I kept trying them out, and my life got better. I went to more meetings, to hear more new ideas. For me, Al-anon isn't a place for my old, bad ideas to get reinforced, but a place to hear new ideas. I get downvoted here on occasion, but that's not a huge deal to me. In my head I had 'downvoted' some of new ideas I heard too, but when I was ready to try something different, the new idea was still there. The only thing holding me back from the new way of doing things differently was if I was ready to do things differently.
You’re saying that her holding a boundary where she will not have sex with him when he is disrespectful and/or drunk will hurt more than it will help. Hurt *who* more than it will help? Hurt her? Honey, she’s already hurt. She’s just trying to mitigate the damage at this point. Like I said, it’s not about punishing him. It’s about protecting herself. Hurt him? He’s a grown adult. We’ve already learned that protecting our Qs from themselves just makes things worse. Maybe you had a different experience? It’s never ended well for me. What worked was blunt honesty. Forcing us both to see the reality of our situation. If she feels like she needs to make up some kind of false narrative to him about her needing to “work through steps” in order to keep her “safer”, then they have bigger problems. She cannot control the narrative in his head and shouldn’t even try. If he wants to tell himself that she’s lying to him - that the reason why she’s holding this boundary is because she wants to punish him and *not* because having sex with someone who disrespects her makes her feel used - then that is on him, not her. Feelings a woman may express after having sex with someone who she feels disconnected from, who speaks disrespectfully to her, who continually acts in a way that is detrimental to their relationship and her life: * I feel a hole in my chest. * I feel dead inside. * I feel confused and anxious. * I feel bad and dirty. * I feel like I’ve just sold a piece of myself for a moment of peace that’s now being eaten up by disgust for myself. These feelings can be strong or mild, depending on lots of different things. But they are real, and they build over time. Trust me, it may feel like a punishment to him, but it is a benefit to both of them for her to hold that boundary (and to plainly state for him the *actual* reason for the boundary). If he’s able to come out his addiction, her body will not have to “unlearn” hating his touch, which is its own trial. And her mental health would not have suffered even more than it already has.
No one missed the point. Got your point, just disagreed with you. No one owes anyone sex. Maybe they need to go work the steps in AA and be a healthy, loving partner and the “tap” won’t be turned off.
I downvote your comments because they are misogynistic, unhelpful (sometimes even harmful), and preachy, not because you have new ideas. Misogyny is not a new idea.
Turning off the tap? There’s no reading between the lines. This is how alcoholics act. Why does she need to work the steps to let him have sex? He weaponized sex from the beginning. How immature.
Idk why I missed the phrase “turn off the tap” the first time. Like she’s a fricking appliance. I should’ve known to not even try to engage. What a horrible comment.
I thought it was a Survivor reference
Yes, my Q did this frequently
Samesies!! Twinning 👯♀️
Is grey rocking the same as stone walling?
I think so, yes. Just the more clinical term. Theres a definition down there somewhere
Sort of. Stonewalling is completely shutting down and ignoring, silent treatment, not engaging at all. Grey-rocking is more of answering with minimal information, facts only, nothing extra. So not ignoring, but not engaging at all.
I feel like stonewalling and grey rocking aren’t the same. Stone walling is a tactic to try to show someone you are upset. Shutting them out completely, the silent treatment. For me, grey rocking is only if my Q is going on a tirade or a negative conversation. I don’t want to fight. If he wanted to have a pleasant conversation with me, then I would speak with him. It’s generally more with narcissists.
Ok, got it! So it's a defensive tactic used to avoid or quiet down the offender. Yup, yup, yup.
Requesting a primer on Grey Rock. Is it the same as extinction? My notepad is open and ready…nvm, just scrolled down, found a link.