When should we give a man the silent treatment and when should we pour out our heart?

Silence is sometimes the tool of choice when a man has behaved badly towards you, and then is attempting to re- engage you.

If your relationship failed because he betrayed you, raged at you, abandoned you or mistreated you in any way.
If you perceived that you were dealing with a narcissist or a borderline disordered man, and decided to break it off, then the best thing to do is to remain silent.

Know that his efforts to communicate with you post break up are most probably due to his need to manipulate your emotions so that you remain vulnerable to him. Power over you is the food his weak ego craves. The best thing to do is to starve it and to remain silent.

Do not empower him nor get pulled back into his destructive orb.

We are not talking hear about the normal and natural ups and downs or occasional out bursts that occur in  any normal relationship. We are speaking specifically of a situation where you have left a relationship that was toxic to you because your man was unhealthy emotionally and took it out on you, was unfaithful or abusive. This man may very likely reach out to you after a break up, even if he is now in another relationship! He may try to keep a Chanel of communication open with you, remain "friends" or try to re establish the relationship, just when you are finally healing from the emotional wounds he inflicted upon you.

Please know that he does not deserve the gratification of your attentions. Don't try to pour out your heart to him, explain yourself to him or offer him an empathetic ear.
Know that he has a need to feel that he still has some power and influence over you, and this is something that he does not deserve.
Keep Silent.
Let his calls go to Voice Mail.
Block him.

Is Your Love the Real Deal?

In a relationship with a narcissist, or a borderline personality - disordered individual, you will find yourself making all of the concessions, feeling pressure to be what he wants you to be, when he wants you to be it. 

When it comes to dispute resolution, its his way or the highway and you are ALWAYS in the wrong. Usually, unless you apologize for being wrong, even when you are right, there will be no making up after a disagreement.

He will bring up past hurts and enumerate your "crimes", never moving past the past, whenever you are having a dispute.

To protect his fragile sense of self, he will lash out in temper in order to maintain control, rather than have an intelligent adult discussion of your two viewpoints.

If you are experiencing this in your relationship, beware! This is a RED FLAG MAN.

CLOSURE - Do We Really Need it?

Ahh that elusive element - Closure.

Sometimes we find ourselves unable to move on emotionally after our romance has ended, even when a significant amount of time has gone by, because we are longing for the one missing element that we believe will empower us to do so.
We believe we need "closure".

If we have experienced a toxic relationship, with an abusive or personality -disordered man, or if we have been cheated on, or lied to, or whatever the fatal issue was, we still may find it very hard to let go emotionally. 
We may tell ourselves that we could do so, if only we had "closure".

But really, what does that mean?

What it means is that we are still waiting for something from the very person who failed to give us what we needed in the first place!

The relationship ended because we discovered betrayal.
We discovered dishonesty.
We experienced emotional or physical abuse.
Perhaps we discovered that he is married! 
He was never available in the first place!

So we end the relationship, on some level. We stop seeing him but we don't stop obsessing over the details of the story, analyzing it a hundred times and playing it out in our minds over and over again with every conceivable different outcome, like a script not yet written.

What we must realize is that we do not need anything from an individual who has wronged us. 

If the issues that arose were powerful enough to break us apart then we must realize that the issues themselves are the root of the closure .

 We must use our painful experience to move on emotionally  towards a happy healthy new relationship.

Putting ourselves in the position of waiting for anything from Mr. Wrong, is an unhealthy and impractical solution to an unsolvable problem. 

We must empower ourselves, and not Mr. Wrong.

Waiting for an explanation, apology, or excuse from him just weakens us all the more, while assigning him power over us.

Instead, realize that you are the prize and he has just lost it.

Hit the gym, hang out with your friends, write out your thoughts and feelings in a diary and stay far away from any thought of texting, calling or "bumping into " him in search for answers to questions which, if we are really honest with ourselves, are self explanatory.

The flaw lies in him alone.
Be glad you missed a bullet.