Silence: A Relationship Killer
Why silence can be more crippling to a relationship than arguments
Over the many years that I’ve been practicing therapy,
I’ve found that couples that are struggling in their relationships
often succumb to the default mode of silence. Sometimes, it’s one person
who defers to the unspoken, and at times it’s actually both. In either
circumstance, such silence—not a healthy pause or meditative
break—speaks to the absence of verbal and emotional intimacy. Unless
we’re communicating on levels of extra sensory perception or body language,
words are the only tools available to us to communicate let alone
resolve our issues. There’s little sense to being in a relationship and
resorting to silence. Not only does it sabotage the lifeline of a
healthy coupling, it chokes your expressive needs.
When you can express what you’re feeling—in the moment that you’re
experiencing it—there’s much less likelihood that you’ll act out on that
feeling. Problematic feelings that go unexpressed tend to percolate and
boil over—they take on energy of their own, and the ensuing conflict
hours or days later may have little correlation to the original
emotional insult. When this occurs there’s little chance of being
validated, as there may be little correspondence between your hurt
feelings and the disruption of the moment.
Telling someone that
you feel angry, and explaining why you do, will ordinarily sever the
reactive state of being angry or acting angrily. Furthermore, the
non-verbalization and suppression of your feelings will—over time—result
in substantial resentment, with the accompanying behavior that we might
expect. If you don’t share your problematic feelings, there is a great
probability that you’ll act out on them, in any number of unrelated
ways. Having done so, you now become the problem in the other’s eyes.
We’ve now entered into a negative spiral of silence and struggle.
Silence is Controlling
When
we think of controlling people, we ordinarily conjure images of loud or
aggressive individuals. They may, in fact, appear to be bullying
and controlling of others. Yet we know exactly what we’re dealing with.
There are no surprises. There’s a much more insidious type of control,
however, which is predicated upon silence. When we don’t share our
thoughts with each other, we are often doing so to control the other’s
reactions and behavior. If they don’t know what we’re contemplating,
then they can’t possibly respond. At times, people who are inclined to
please others or avoid confrontation fall prey to this dilemma. The
tendency is to choose silence rather than upset the other party.
When
we resort to silence, we create an internal monologue, typically
ascribing onto others our projection of how we assume they would respond
if we actually shared our thoughts with them. In other words, we play
out an entire script in which their role is predetermined. In doing so,
we are locked into a state of stagnation, the communication stalls and
the relationship has little chance to evolve. In such situations, it
ordinarily withers. There’s certainly no opportunity for resolution, let
alone growth.
At other times, silence is used to punish. By withdrawing from the relationship silence becomes a medium for anger,
also obstructing the opportunity for resolution. In such cases, silence
is employed to control the other’s behavior. It mutes our thoughts and
feelings, and deprives the potential for authentic dialogue. There is no
possibility of resolution. Silence in these circumstances is thoroughly
non-participatory.
Besides creating an obvious roadblock to the health of the relationship, silence can lead to despair and depression.
I’m not referring to healthy breaks of contemplative reflection, but to
the chronic struggle people have in expressing their feelings. Silence
chokes the breath of relationship. Manipulative silence is soul
defeating; the expressing of one’s voice is life affirming.
People
who default to silence may claim, “They won’t really listen” or “They
will only throw it back at me and I don’t want to fight.” Although this
thinking may be understandable, it is self-injurious. We invalidate
ourselves when we shut down our own articulation. Fortunately, we don’t
have to remain mired in the struggle with silence as we can improve our
chances of actually being heard in such circumstances. Leaning how to be
heard is an acquired skill. I'll address how you can develop that
ability in my next post.
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