Tampo: The Filipino Silent Treatment, and How to Actually Resolve It

There is one thing you will never hear me say, and that is that Australian culture or "Western culture" (if there is such a thing) is superior to Filipino culture. It will never happen. I choose to live here, I've done so for many years, and I only get homesick when I listen to John Williamson songs. There are wonderful things in Filipino culture and wonderful things in Australian culture. Tampo is not one of the wonderful things. Every Australian man married to a Filipina will, I think, agree.

What it is

Tampo is when your Filipina lets her frustrations build up and gives you "the silent treatment." All Filipinos have tampo from time to time, but it's more common and more infamous when women do it. Filipino men do it too, but less often.

The silent treatment means no talking. No responses to "what's wrong?" No eye contact. Often a pouty face. Sometimes slamming doors and banging pots and pans. Sometimes storming off, packing a bag, and leaving for a while.

My experiences

To preserve my life as I know it, I'll leave out any experiences with my wife (not that she would ever do that, being perfect in every way) and regress to older relationships and what I've heard from friends.

• A previous girlfriend would turn off her phone when she was in tampo. Once she did it for nearly two weeks.
• The same girlfriend, on another occasion, planned to walk home from one side of Cebu to the other in the middle of the night.
• A friend's wife stormed off mid-tampo, and assumed my wife would join her in some sort of sisterhood-bond, even though my wife had no issue with her own husband.
• My mother-in-law, in her seventies at the time, didn't like something my wife said, and disappeared for three days. I said, "Ask your dad where she is." My wife said, "He probably doesn't even know she's gone."

So no, tampo isn't just a younger woman's thing.

Why it happens

Many of you already know that harmony, or pakikisama, is a way of life in Filipino society. Keeping a smile on the face. Keeping unharmonious feelings at bay. Not challenging people, and not risking embarrassment or loss of face (nakakahiya) by speaking up. The way to honour saving face is to keep quiet and keep smiling.

In Australia, the long-running practice has been to confront others with the truth. We Aussies do it when we feel the truth is called for. If we do it well, we do it without anger. But we still confront, whether we control our anger or not. We talk it out. When we do it well, we explain how a particular action made us feel, and hope that the other person cares more about our feelings than their own and apologises. The problem goes away quickly when it's handled skillfully.

In the Philippines, very few people explain when something bothers them. They usually keep it to themselves. If it's extreme, or if it keeps happening, the pressure mounts inside until they can't take it anymore.

I've always equated this with physically sweeping dirt under the mat. Eventually there's a large lump in the mat that you trip on every time you pass. A good reason not to emotionally sweep hurtful matters under a mental mat.

So the pressure builds. Does she express her feelings and try to resolve the matter? No. Why? Because that would be confrontational and might cause disharmony and upset everyone. So it's a passive-aggressive response. If you manage to get a response by asking her again and again, you'll get "I'm fine" or "nothing is wrong."

Sound familiar? Even in Australia? "If you have to ask me what's wrong, we really have a problem." Or the same "I'm fine" and "nothing is wrong."

Not every Australian confronts issues either. Those of my mother's generation believed you solved problems by denial and periods of silence, and men of my father's generation wouldn't even bother asking what was wrong. I've heard the silent treatment called Husbands' Delight. I've heard many an Australian man say he enjoys it when his wife has tampo, so he can go fishing. I hope the current audience is a bit kinder and a bit further up the evolutionary scale.

So in short: something has happened that hurt her feelings. She hasn't told anyone. It builds up to a point where she can no longer pretend it doesn't bother her, and it comes out of her as a passive-aggressive silent treatment. A tampo.

How most Filipinos handle it

Ask a Filipino man how to deal with his wife's tampo. Confront her? Definitely not. He'll recommend a combination of two things.

First: under no circumstances confront her about it. Try to act like you don't know it's happening. Maintain that until she cools down on her own.

Second: make malambing. Pronounced "mah-lum-bing," not like "Mary had a little lamb." It means be very sweet to her until it wears her down.

Right or wrong? Yes, both will generally work. Generation after generation doing this means it's tried and tested. Maybe you want to do this. It's your relationship and your life.

The lambing approach has its own logic. For Filipino couples where both partners share the cultural frame, it often works. The reason it doesn't work as well in Australian-Filipina marriages isn't that lambing is wrong, it's that an Australian husband can't authentically perform it the way a Filipino husband can, and his wife can sense the difference.

In my own view, the lambing method works at keeping the peace, but it pretty much guarantees the issue will happen again. It doesn't get to the root of the problem, which means someone ends up unhappy. It's not a win-win.

Back to my wife

I mentioned my wife. I'm sure most of you saw through my clever ploy and guessed that my Filipina wife has also had her moments. Did I do malambing or just ignore it? No. That's never been my nature.

Leave an issue unresolved, and it becomes that lump in the carpet. Living with that and doing nothing is soul-destroying, at least for me. I've long been a believer in fixing things and making life better. Unless your plan is to be the dominant party and aggressively demand "your rights," you deal with this by talking, encouraging her to talk, and actively listening.

Be aware that this is something entirely new to the average Filipino. Most have spent their entire lives not being confronted about anything at all. I remember once saying to my wife, "We need to talk about this." Her response was shock. She actually said, "Husbands and wives don't talk about things. My parents never did." Yes, seriously.

Nowadays, if something is wrong, she tells me. She still has regressive moments when I raise issues, but it gets easier and easier. It takes time to unlearn lifetime habits and assimilate new ways. The same applies in reverse: for me, learning when to back off and let space do its work hasn't come naturally either.

A method that actually works

The first steps:

• Ask what's wrong. Why is she upset? She may tell you, but don't be surprised if she doesn't.
• Persist gently, or try again later when she's cooled down.

That's a healthy start. Find out what the issue is. Don't assume. And be prepared for anything. Maybe it's her issue (imagining you meant something you didn't, thinking you were flirting with another woman when you weren't). Or maybe you actually did do something hurtful.

Active listening means responding with something like: "Oh, I see. I didn't realise that. Are you saying you felt I was flirting with Mary Jane and that this hurt your feelings?" Do your best to understand, and show her that what she says matters.

Don't get defensive, don't get aggressive, and don't use value judgements. Don't say, "You did this because you're a heartless cow." Don't say, "You never care about my feelings." Resist the urge to hurt her back, even when you feel hurt.

Instead, phrase things in terms of how you feel. No one can deny what you feel. "When you accuse me of flirting with Mary Jane, it makes me feel that you don't trust me." You should also say, "I'm sorry that you felt that way, and I understand how hurtful that must have been to you."

Don't attack. Don't accuse. Don't try to put her down. If you love each other, you can sort it out this way.

In the early days of our marriage, when my wife was adjusting to Australian words and expressions, she would find it funny to call me "you bastard." She meant nothing by it, especially since Australian men often greet their male friends that way. I explained that while I knew she had no intention of hurting my feelings, a woman saying that to a man implied that he didn't treat ladies as a gentleman should. And I pride myself on being a gentleman. She said, "Oh, sorry. I didn't realise." I said, "Perfectly OK." It was never an issue again.

That small example is the difference in methods. I've happily let go of some Australian cultural ways and replaced them with more pleasant Filipino ways. But I refuse to clam up and live with things that are wrong or destructive in our marriage. The active-listening approach took my wife some adjustment, but it works, and twenty years on, we're closer for it.

This is closely tied to what I've written about elsewhere: the Filipino concept of utang na loob, the idea of a lifelong debt of gratitude, sits underneath a lot of these communication patterns. And meeting her family for the first time is often where you first encounter the cultural machinery that later shows up in tampo. Understanding all three together helps.

If you deal with the issue, you should both hopefully learn something, and you'll be less likely to hurt each other in the future. You'll become closer. And you'll experience that most satisfying of experiences, which is to be understood.