Married to a Man Who Doesn't Understand the Silent Treatment

After three years of marriage to Chandler Goodwin, his wife believes his coldness is just part of his personality. She has spent their relationship apologizing for every conflict, assuming he simply doesn't understand emotional cues like the silent treatment. However, when she catches him desperately pleading for his assistant's forgiveness after less than an hour of silence, the truth emerges. It wasn't that he lacked emotion; he just never cared enough to coax her.

Chapters

Chapter 1

My husband, Chandler Goodwin, claims that he doesn't understand what the phrases "silent treatment" or "giving the cold shoulder" mean. Yet, in the three years we have been married, he has never once spoken to me sweetly.

The first time we have a falling out, I remain proud and dignified. We end up ignoring each other for seven days straight.

The seventh time we have a cold standoff, I start to panic a little. However, despite trying all sorts of methods, he doesn't back down.

The 11th time it happens, I have already learned to work through my emotions myself. Chandler doesn't even need to say anything before I take the initiative to apologize first.

I simply think that he's just a naturally indifferent person, that nobody can warm his stone-cold heart.

Then, on the third year of our marriage, I accidentally ruin his dress shirt while ironing it. Chandler doesn't say a word, but that very night, he packs his things and moves into a hotel.

On the third day of being blocked, I head to his company with a handwritten apology.

While passing by his office, I spot him leaning over to shoot his angry assistant a doting smile.

"I'm sorry for raising my voice at you just now and upsetting you. It's been 57 minutes since you started ignoring me. Please stop giving me the cold shoulder, alright?"

I freeze on the spot, the apology letter in my hand practically burning my fingers.

As it turns out, it's not that he doesn't know what the silent treatment means—it's just that I've never been the person he wants to coax.

The apology letter was an unspoken agreement between Chandler Goodwin and me. Every time we fought, I had to handwrite one as an olive branch.

The first time I wrote an apology letter, tears and snot drenched my face. On one hand, I kept berating myself for humbling myself to this point for a man's sake. On the other hand, I just couldn't stop my hand from moving across the page. After all, being given the silent treatment was just too tormenting.

Eventually, there was a third time, a ninth time, a 17th time… It was like a vicious cycle.

In fact, on the way to the company, I had even been thinking, "Was my handwriting neat enough? Was my attitude sincere enough? Chandler will probably stop being angry once he reads this, right?"

Yet now, seeing the genuine warmth and affection in his eyes as he stared at his assistant, I only felt a chill sweep through my entire body.

As it turned out, it wasn't that he didn't understand what the silent treatment meant—it was just that I'd never been someone he was willing to coax.

While Chandler was busy with a meeting, I took the opportunity to meet with his assistant. After ordering our coffees, I carefully scrutinized the woman across from me.

She wasn't as pretty as I was, perhaps just a bit above average, and judging from her slender figure, she probably didn't have a habit of going to the gym. Status-wise, I was a match for Chandler, while she was merely an intern.

No matter if it was her looks, figure, or status, she was in no way comparable to me.

And yet, I had still lost to her.

During the past three years that I was married to Chandler, we had had countless fights that led to the silent treatment. Even so, he had never once been the one to try to reconcile with me first.

I had assumed he was just that cold and indifferent by nature, that he was the same to everyone. It was only today that I discovered that wasn't the truth.

He was entirely capable of smiling with such doting affection. He didn't like the feeling of being ignored, and he knew that he had to set aside his pride to make a woman happy.

I just couldn't understand—where had I gone wrong? Why had I lost? How badly had I lost?

That was the reason I invited Amanda Silton, his assistant, out today. I wanted answers.

Amanda hadn't expected that I would ask her such a question. The nervousness at being caught by her lover's wife abruptly turned to bewilderment.

"I-Is that all you wanted to know?"

Crumpling the apology letter in my hand, I stuffed it into my bag. Then, levelling a serious gaze on Amanda, I replied sincerely, "Yes, that's all I want to know. Can you tell me in what way I have lost?"

Continue to next part

Celebrating the third year of her marriage to Eanes Lambert, a woman is met not with romance but with her husband's public devotion to his childhood sweetheart. When she acknowledges their blatant social media post, Eanes lashes out, labeling her jealousy as petty. The disrespect peaks when the mistress sends a photo of them kissing. Instead of the usual confrontation, the wife chooses to walk away from the billionaire, finally granting him the freedom he clearly desires.

Billionaire Modern Romance

8.0

Flash Marriage To The Hidden Billionaire

8.0

My abusive step-family isolated me completely, holding my mother's medical funds hostage to control my every move. Yesterday, they finalized my sale. "You will marry Rudy Petrov next month. He is fifty, wealthy, and willing to overlook your lack of pedigree." Pushed to the absolute edge, I did the insane. I posted an ad online offering my life savings of $50,000 for a contract husband. A stranger named Brennan agreed. But my family wouldn't let me go. They forced me back for a dinner by threatening my mother's life-saving prescriptions. At the table, they relentlessly mocked my new "poor IT guy" husband and intentionally burned my hand with boiling tea. Worse, the housekeeper locked me in a guest room and forced drugs down my throat so Rudy could come in and assault me. I lay there paralyzed on the floor, bleeding from Rudy's slap, utterly terrified. I couldn't understand why my own family would throw me to the wolves, and I felt a crushing guilt for dragging an innocent, ordinary guy into my nightmare. Until a pitch-black Maybach smashed through the estate's wrought-iron gates at eighty miles an hour. My "poor" husband kicked the solid oak doors off their hinges, beat Rudy half to death, and carried me out into the rain. I didn't know it yet, but the ordinary man I hired to save me was a ruthless billionaire, and he was about to erase my family's entire empire by morning.

Billionaire Modern Romance

8.1

My Husband Gave Our Penthouse Key to His Ex

8.1

After three years of marriage, Olivia discovers her husband, billionaire Ethan, secretly gave his former lover the key to their private penthouse. This betrayal shatters her trust and forces her to confront the reality of their hollow union. As Ethan’s past flame begins to reclaim her place in his life, Olivia must decide whether to fight for a man who never let go of his history or finally walk away from the luxury and lies to find her own path.

Billionaire Modern Romance

7.7

Owned by the Ex

7.7

Silas Vane, a billionaire on the edge of ruin, needs his ex-wife's signature to save his tech empire-and June Ashby, his scorned orchard-owning ex, wants only one thing: to make him suffer. The deal is brutal, simple, and non-negotiable: Silas must move back to their small hometown, trade his silk suits for calloused hands, and work the orchard harvest for six months. Worse? He has to play her doting husband for the press-fake marriage, real contract, no room for error. What starts as a revenge-fueled game quickly spirals. As the sun dips below the orchard trees, old sparks reignite, and the line between fake and real blurs into something dangerous. Silas came to town for a patent to save his empire. But he might just walk away with a broken contract-and a heart completely owned by the woman who set out to destroy him.

Billionaire Modern Romance

9.0

The Dying Billionaire's Secret Contract Wife

9.0

I stood in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, clutching a crystal flute of champagne that felt like a lead weight. It was my engagement party, the night I was supposed to be the happiest woman in New York. Then my phone buzzed with a link that shattered everything. I watched a video of my fiancé, Jed, tangled in the arms of my roommate while he laughed about how I was just a "boring, safe little girl" he needed to tolerate until my family's stock transfer went through. When I confronted him and walked out, I thought the nightmare was over, but my own father called me in a rage. He didn't care that I’d been betrayed; he only cared that the merger was the only thing keeping him from bankruptcy. He froze my bank accounts and left me with exactly forty-two dollars to my name. Jed started sending me threats, promising to leak private videos to the press if I didn't come back to him. I was penniless, homeless, and being hunted by a man who wanted to destroy my soul. Desperate, I took the only deal left on the table: a contract marriage to Hardin Hunter, a reclusive billionaire heir with terminal heart failure. The deal was simple: ten million dollars to be a "nurse with a ring" for six months until he passed away. I signed the papers and moved into his gothic manor, expecting to wait for a heart to stop beating. But when Hardin pinned me against a wall, his grip like iron and his pulse thundering with a strength no dying man should possess, I realized the "dying" heir was a lie. "You're not dying," I whispered, feeling the raw power of his heart against my hand. Hardin just looked at me with eyes like molten glass and said, "I might be a monster, Elsie, but I'm the only one who can keep you alive."

Billionaire Modern Romance

7.9

The Jilted Heiress: Rising From Betrayal

7.9

I woke up in a sterile hospital bed with the smell of antiseptic burning my throat, having just had my stomach pumped six hours ago. Before the sedatives even wore off, my mother called, not to ask if I was alive, but to demand I show up at my sister’s birthday gala in two hours. To her, I wasn't a daughter; I was a three-hundred-million-dollar signature needed for a corporate merger. She didn't care that I was suicidal, or that my fiancé, Franco, was currently at a luxury hotel with his "secretary" while I was hooked up to an IV. At the gala, the humiliation only deepened. I watched my fiancé walk in with his mistress, the air thick with her cloying perfume. When my grandmother’s "lost" emeralds—my rightful inheritance—spilled out of the mistress’s purse, my mother didn't flinch. Instead, she hissed at me to give them back to avoid a scene. My sister, the "perfect" golden child, took the stage and told the elite crowd that I was mentally unstable and "confused" due to my medication. I stood there, drenched in champagne and bleeding from a glass shard, while my own family gaslighted me in front of the world's press. Franco didn't even look at me as he shielded his mistress from the cameras, leaving me to stand alone in the wreckage of a life they had dismantled. I realized then that my parents didn't want a daughter; they wanted a pawn who wouldn't talk back. Why was my life worth less than a line item in a budget? How could a mother hand her daughter’s legacy to a mistress just to keep a contract intact? As my sister lunged at me in a fit of rage, I kicked her into the infinity pool and watched the "perfect" family mask finally shatter. I didn't wait for them to pull me down; I let the weight of my gown drag me into the dark water myself. Let them think the broken Kalea Alexander is gone. When I surface, I’m not coming back as a daughter—I’m coming back as their worst nightmare.

Billionaire Modern Romance

Married to a Man Who Doesn't Understand the Silent Treatment

Chapter 1

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