Let me clarify that my response is based on my experiences and observations in my own relationships and in the relationships of people around me.
What tampo is not
It’s not the same “silent treatment” as it is known and used in the Western World.
It's not even “sulking” as it is often translated.
What tampo looks like
It is essentially a withdrawal of active engagement with another person or a group of persons. Filipinos are known to be hospitable and they actively go out of their way to make people feel comfortable and they belong. We are generally friendly in that way. So, when a Filipino has “tampo” or a sense of injured feelings, they will withdraw from active engagement.
In close personal relationships, Filipinos give of themselves and often sacrificially. This is how we show how we value people and our relationships with people. We desire close personal ties with people who are important to us because we love them or admire them. We want to be part of their lives as they are part of ours.
Filipinos are collectivist in the way they think and are not nearly as individualistic as Westerners. While Westerners work toward self-fulfillment, Filipinos work toward smooth relationships with significant others. This is how they measure fulfillment.
They actively try to get to know people as they ever enlarge their social group of acquaintances and friends who may one day become part of their family as in-laws or as fictive relatives (inaanak, kinakapatid, ninong or ninang), or become their boss at work or their business partner.
For Filipinos, confrontational communication is not always the first, the best, or the wisest way to tell people they are doing something wrong or hurtful. Filipinos are ever mindful of social class and social hierarchy. Filipinos relate differently and even speak differently to older people, and those who have high educational attainment or a high position in an enterprise.
When people in power over them at work or school, or when people with authority over them in the family act in ways that hurt Filipinos, tampo or pag-tatampo is a way for Filipinos to show that they were hurt without directly challenging or confronting those in authority over them. To tell them off or to sass them would be bad social form, it shows ill-breeding.
For Filipinos, direct communication to someone they love is often unthinkable. One cannot tell one’s parent or spouse that they are wrong or they are causing hurt because to directly communicate this would jeopardize the relationships they are trying to build and maintain with them.
And the hurt or the grief that causes the “tampo” response is still real. It must be expressed. It signals that some unspoken line or boundary has been breached. But the hurt or grief cannot be expressed in a direct way to break the relationship.
Pag-tatampo is a softer way of showing displeasure, disappointment, hurt, or anger without embarrassing or humiliating the person who had caused the hurt.
The goal of tampo is to express grief, hurt or displeasure, but there is also an implicit invitation for whoever has caused the hurt to examine their behavior, to reflect, to inquire, and make amends to restore the relationship.
Filipinos are generally relational. They treat others as well as they expect to be treated. They expect others to actively mend relationships that may be neglected or overlooked and in danger of being broken.
In this way, “tampo” is a way most Filipinos gauge whether your esteem of them is as high as their esteem of you. This is a way of probing whether the relationship is reciprocal and equally caring and thoughtful, if the desire to continue relating to each other is mutual.
Consider in a romantic relationship, there are two people who are exclusively sharing their time and resources. Respect, affection, and esteem must be mutual. Both people in the relationship must act and behave toward each other with loyalty and affection. In dealing with others outside the relationship (their family or their friend group) they must signal that their ultimate loyalty belongs to their partner or spouse who is their priority.
A woman whose husband forgets her birthday, for instance, will not confront her husband about it. She will not immediately react in anger because she does not want to end the relationship. She does not want to damage it. She merely wants to express that some social or relational obligation has been neglected and must be given attention, remedied, and restored.
She also considers that his forgetting may not have been an act of neglect or a cooling of his affection. He may have had his wallet stolen, or his boss at work may have disciplined him. His car or his tools-in-trade may have broken down and his meagre resources may have been used to fix those or replace them. This means the husband may have had to choose between “forgetting” (not giving a present on) his wife’s birthday may have been because the husband used his meagre resources to neutralize a threat to the family’s source of income. If that were the case, then the husband may have caused the wife grief or hurt, but it was not intentional. And so, getting angry is not the best way to express her hurt when the husband had big problems to take care of and taking care of them would surely benefit the relationship.
If the husband values his wife in the same way and with the same intensity as the wife values her husband, then the husband will immediately notice that something has shifted a bit in the way the wife related to him. He will begin to think what could have caused it. He retraces his steps, he figures it out, and he seeks to address his wife's sudden coolness toward him.
He does this by “panunuyo” or “susuyuin niya ulit” ang wife niya. He may come home with flowers or he may ask her out on a date, or he may hand her some money for a new dress, or just spend time doing with her whatever she wants to do. The woman may use part of the money given to her to buy something for her husband, too, to show that she appreciates the gesture.
The relationship is restored in its fervor. The wife is satisfied that her husband has noticed the slight shift. This means that he is actively regarding her (may pagtingin pa sa kaniya), and that she has enough “halaga” or value to him that he relates to her as actively as she related to him by acts of loving attention and service.
It's not quite so much the money value of whatever gift that is important as the thoughts and motivations behind the gift. It is the esteem which the husband holds for the wife that is important. It's the fact that he noticed her because he was looking at her the whole time, but sometimes life gets in the way.
Faith in the reciprocity and mutual nature of the relationship is restored. Intimacy is renewed and may even heighten. Because the suyuan that follows the tampo is the opportunity for both to know each other better.
Filipinos will go out of their way to tend to relationships that are important to them. They expect the same tending from others who seek to have a long and satisfying relationship with them as well.
I told my daughter about this post right after I uploaded it, and she made a point that had not occurred to me. The tampo is a way to minimize the noise of conflict in a relationship, a way of ensuring that others in the community will not notice too much for the couple to become the object of gossip.
In a small Filipino farming community where planting and harvesting chores are communal activities, the community is quick to notice conflict. A couple cannot tell their neighbors that it is none of their business. A possible breakdown of a relationship is the community's business, because it will affect the community activities of harvesting and planting.
Of course, now, Filipinos live in cities and very few are farmers, but there are still community activities—the fiesta, politics and elections are still community activities. The breakdown of marital and familial relationships impact how people move in their community.
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