Troubleshooting quiet quitting: What to do when it's not working

Quiet quitting is challenging. Here are some tips for maximizing quality of life when you decide to emotionally withdraw from your marriage.

“I’ve been quiet quitting my marriage for a few weeks now, but it’s not working.”

It’s one of the most common complaints I hear in the private support group I offer to paid Substack subscribers.

Quiet quitting is not a miracle solution. It’s not something you do once to change your marriage. It’s an ongoing process. More importantly, it’s an act of desperation. It’s what you do when your marriage is unsalvageable but you can’t yet leave. The goal isn’t to enact change; it’s to survive as you plan your exit.

So what are the most common mistakes? And what can you do to make your life as good as possible when you have to quiet quit? Here are the most common mistakes I see, and how to reframe things.

The mistake: Thinking quiet quitting will save your marriage

Quiet quitting is not a tool to use in a basically functional marriage, or in a marriage you hope can be saved. In fact, quiet quitting in a good or decent marriage that you hope to save would be an act of abuse. That’s because quiet quitting involves doing as little work as possible, and totally disengaging—two acts that should undermine your marriage, not save it.

You should only quiet quit after you believe that your marriage can’t change, come to believe your marriage is abusive, or have tried and failed to get you partner to match your work. Your husband’s behavior is not going to improve when you quiet quit, because he’s going to stop getting free labor from his servant.

The reframe: Quiet quitting saves you, not your marriage

Quiet quitting is a self-protective strategy. The sole goal is to protect your own mental health, and to stop wasting labor on someone who neither appreciates nor deserves it. You should be feeling steadily better and freer because you’re spending less time on your personal manbaby.

The mistake: Not doing anything for your husband

Someone in my group recently shared that she had stopped cleaning up after her husband, but that the result is a messier, unpleasant house.

Quiet quitting is about stopping doing the things that make your life worse, that only or primarily serve him, not quitting all cleaning or all actions that benefit your spouse. If you stop cleaning up after your partner, your life is going to get harder and worse.

The reframe: Doing what’s necessary to preserve your comfort

When you quiet quit, direct your attention away from being a good wife or pleasing your husband, and toward making your life as good as possible. Maybe you start putting all of his messes in his office instead of cleaning them up. Maybe you let him trash his closet and stop doing his laundry. But you’re probably going to still be cleaning common areas and cooking, because these are actions that benefit everyone.

Consider strategies to reduce your workload, and to get his mess out of the house without dealing with it. Then adopt them all.

The mistake: The silent treatment, ignoring your husband, and other overt acts of hostility

Your husband’s an asshole. That’s why you’re quiet quitting. But treating assholes badly usually makes them behave worse. Overt and intentional acts of aggression demand more work. You’re trying to reduce your workload, not increase it. Your husband is going to get angry if you give him the silent treatment, or ignore him, or do anything else that puts your anger on display.

And then you’re going to have to deal with the consequences of that anger. So even though he might deserve your hostility, you don’t deserve the consequences of displaying that hostility.

The reframe: Do what is necessary to not make things worse

Consider what takes the least effort, and causes the least discord. Then do that. You might have to make small talk, be friendly, or ignore his bad moods. You might have to pretend to no longer be angry about something that, in reality, you’ll never forgive. It’s hard to keep things bottled up; it’s certainly not something you should have to do in a healthy relationship. But remember: the goal is to minimize the misery while you focus on plotting your escape.

There may be some satisfaction in making your husband think you’ve suddenly stopped caring, too. If you need to punish him, remind yourself that denying him access to your inner life is a type of punishment.

The mistake: Thinking your husband will be remorseful

Your husband is not going to be remorseful because you have withdrawn certain services. He’ll probably be angry. And if you stop talking to him about your emotions, stop making demands of him, and otherwise emotionally withdraw, he may even be relieved. He might think things have improved in your relationship.

This speaks to how distorted the values of an emotionally distant or abusive man really are. When you withdraw, he thinks things are better because he doesn’t want a relationship with you as a human being—just as a servant.

The reframe: Stop caring what your husband does

The most painful aspect of quiet quitting is detaching yourself emotionally from your husband, what he thinks, and what he does. After all, you at one point wanted to spend your life with this person. The heartbreak and grief are real, and you should not blame or judge yourself for feeling them.

Remember, though, that grief is the natural response to any loss. Its presence does not mean that you’re doing the wrong thing. Your desire to receive love from your husband doesn’t mean that he’s the man for you, or that quiet quitting is wrong. These feelings are annoying extinction bursts that will get better with time.

When your husband mistreats you, or doesn’t care, or otherwise triggers you, remind yourself that it’s not really the man you fell in love with who is doing this. It’s patriarchy. Your husband is infected with the virus of patriarchy, which controls his brain and renders him unable to treat you as a human being who matters. It’s not you. It’s him. And he won’t change because he can’t.

The mistake: Continuing to argue with your spouse

Years, and maybe decades, have shown you that arguing doesn’t work. So don’t even bother. And when he wants to argue, don’t take the bait. Arguing is a waste of your time. It exploits your emotions, and makes quiet quitting more difficult—precisely the reason your husband might try to argue with you more when you withdraw. For men who don’t know how to connect, fighting is better than nothing. So treat his arguments as his pathetic attempts at connection, rather than a sign that there is something wrong with you.

The solution: Gray rocking

Your goal should no longer be to convince your husband of anything specific, to win, to get more out of him, to change him in any way. Instead, be as boring as possible when he tries to embroil you in a fight. Say as little as is necessary to avoid the confrontation and get on with your life—even if doing so requires apologizing when you’re not sorry or pretending you care about his feelings.

The mistake: Focusing your energy on getting quiet quitting ‘right’

Quiet quitting is an inferior strategy. It’s what you do when the better options—improving your marriage or leaving—are impossible. It’s not a religion, not something that will fix everything, not something you can ever get fully right. You can only do the best you can. Quiet quitting does not “work,” in that it won’t get rid of your husband or convince him to change. It will only give you a little more time and space to focus on your own needs.

The reframe: Keep your eye on the prize—leaving

Use the additional time quiet quitting offers to begin devising your escape plan. Can you get a job? Build a deeper friendship network? Begin documenting abuse? Start saving money? Whatever barriers you face to leaving, spend this time planning to surmount them. It will take time. But at the worst moments, knowing you are working on your plan may inspire you to keep pushing through.