Leaving things unsaid
The art of staying silent
Emma Touchard
Caitlin Wong
There's a sentence that lingers in the back of our throats.
The sentence that we never say. The words that sit in a chat box, in our minds, rehearsed over and over. Fingers hover over the send button only for the entire message to get backspaced. Instead of saying or sending these words, they stay in the gap between what we may feel and what we allow others to hear.
When we are standing in front of someone we love debating whether to say the thing that might change everything, sometimes we speak, but most of the time we don't.
Why do we do this? Why do people choose silence, pain and restraint when the instinct to speak is present? When we look back, does leaving words unsaid give us a feeling of regret, or will we be glad in the end?
What's the intent behind holding back? Does silence hurt us or cure us? Are we protecting ourselves or others? Will words, unspoken yet prevalent, come back to haunt us? As they say, silence speaks louder than words.
There is no singular reason why people leave words unsaid. According to research from Nova Southeastern University, “The Role of Silence and Avoidance in Interpersonal Conflict,” silence often comes from fear of confrontation or conflict avoidance. Scholars note that silence becomes “a competent communicative strategy” when speaking up feels emotionally frightening.
The dimension of love speaks to me from there — where silence protects relationships. This is evident in the plethora of situations where biting our tongue becomes the default response. Although we don’t know the exact reason all the time, it comes down to a few categories: FEAR, LOVE and CONFLICT.
Fear
Fear of embarrassment when we’re not sure of ourselves. Fear of rejection, or of others not reciprocating our feelings. Fear of judgment when we confess to things we’re not proud of. Fear of admitting we made a mistake.
Imagine this scene (one that I’m sure we’ve all been in): You’re standing there, words on the tip of your tongue, heart racing, trying to decide whether to speak or to stay quiet.
These scenarios may take place in the workplace where employees are afraid to challenge a manager's ideas or speak up about problems for fear of being fired or giving themselves a “bad image.”
A survey by the Institute of Business Ethics regarding silence in the workplace found that 43% of employees fear reprisals if they speak up. CEO Lauren Branston stated, “If we’re serious about preventing the harmful workplace behaviors that we see constantly hitting the headlines, like sexual harassment and bullying, a safe speak-up culture is crucial,” and, “When employees are afraid of retaliation or believe their concerns won’t be acted upon, serious issues can persist unchecked.”
Speaking up in the classroom is a scenario I find myself feeling this the most. When you want to raise your hand, but what if you’re wrong? When you want to participate, but no one else is. Even making what seems like a “silly” mistake on a quiz and asking the professor for another chance can be nerve-wracking.
Fear is likely what makes up most of the silence in professional settings such as work or school. The same survey found that among the 67% who said they raised concerns about misconduct, about half reported facing personal disadvantage or retaliation as a result. Although we may know that speaking up for what we believe is right, that all seems to crumble once it becomes time to actually act on what we preach.
We prepare ourselves for humiliation we don’t know will even exist: rehearsing rejections, bad facial expressions, gossip behind our backs, to eventually convince ourselves we will be safer if unheard.
Fear is a product of acting on what we know is right. We’re taught our entire lives to speak up for ourselves. It becomes hard standing in front of the one who employs, directs or teaches.
Ultimately, the worst anyone can say is “no.” “No” is temporary. Keeping words unspoken is permanent. Silence only keeps you where you are.
The scenarios we fear most rarely unfold the way our minds tell us they will: Asking won’t get us fired, and speaking up won’t ruin our reputation. Fear blurs what we already understand.
Love
The most gut-wrenching conversations that will ever take place in our lives are often with someone we love or once did.
The closer we are to someone, the more we have to lose. It’s easier to be silent than to lose a person who means so much.
But to what extent should we bottle up words, feelings and anger to preserve the love we put so much effort into? Is it worth it to prioritize relationships over our own emotions? Or does that raise the question, is this person really for you if you fear speaking up?
When we are deeply involved with someone, the comfort of their presence can erase any thought, question or opportunity of losing them. This goes deeper than not saying what you feel, but it's where it begins. When we avoid hard conversations, most of that is communicated through absence — silence. It is heard through the invisible walls that silence has built, long before either person realizes it, until the distance has already taken over.
Relationship expert and psychologist John Gottman refers to this as “stonewalling,” one of the main causes of relationship destruction — avoidance and emotional silence.
As time passes, we start speaking less and thinking more. We spend time subconsciously convincing ourselves that the mental endurance of hauling so many unsaid words equals love.
Silence becomes a language. We can believe that our thoughts become readable to those who love us without explanation, although even people who care deeply about us cannot hear what lingers inside our brains.
Love complicates silence — good and bad. Silence becomes the sacrifice we make to hold onto a person we love because we would rather swallow the truth than watch it puncture them.
Over time, that kind of silence becomes suffocating. What we intended to protect slips away. That's the inevitability of silence. There is a gloomy period of grief that occurs when we face a connection that deteriorates from the inside out. The slow agony of losing a connection as a result of truths and thoughts that were never said. Sometimes, relationships don’t end because of what was said, but because of what wasn’t.
Conflict
Silence under the pressure of conflict is the most complicated and disruptive form of communication. It stems from anger, despair and a sense of defeat — sometimes a form of surrender. Sometimes you stay silent out of fear of making things worse or being so angry that you need to step back.
These are the kind of arguments you remember in the shower and think of a comeback that you should’ve said. Some arguments can turn into displays of arrogance or ways to protect pride. In these moments, silence speaks louder than shouting. It creates room for time and distance and puts a hold on reconciliation.
Surrendering can be the easiest response when the other person will never understand your side.
To “agree to disagree” really means to “keep it to yourself and move on.”
A lot of these conversations happen between siblings, cousins or even parents. Typically, in these relationships, we sweep issues under the rug and never bring them up again, but when do we as human beings collectively decide it matters — when the silence in anger or conflict becomes too uncomfortable to bear?
There comes a point where silence stops feeling like protection and begins to feel like punishment. One person waits for the other to break the silence … and waits, and waits. They wait for an apology to ease the tension. Could both sides want the same thing? What if the other person believes they deserve an apology too?
When silence under conflict turns into another conflict in itself, time will fly and both sides remain silent waiting for the other person. What was thought to be a temporary break turns into a permanent one.
Despite it all, silence isn’t always cruel. It can be necessary to take a moment to breathe and find distance when the wrong words can come out — a natural occurrence stemming from anger. Not every situation needs an immediate reaction.
Take a deep breath and come back to it. This allows us to preserve a connection and find what got lost in the midst of a disagreement. Silence can trap the words we shouldn’t say and allow us to rephrase them with a clearer consciousness.
The value of silence
Silence can protect us in the moment, but it weighs on us in the long run.
Words kept inside us rarely disappear — they echo in our minds at any small reminder, or at random moments.
We tell ourselves that silence will protect our peace, but that is avoidance.
The more we keep words unsaid, the more we lose our dignity. After a while, we start to doubt ourselves and invalidate feelings we once felt. We start to tell ourselves, “Maybe it wasn’t that serious.”
Repeatedly silencing ourselves creates room to doubt our real emotions, or to believe that our experiences didn’t count unless someone witnessed them.
When you rewrite a story, you’re just changing it to fit how you want to feel, to stop feeling the pressure of avoidance. The price we pay for silence is not the cost of protection but of distance, absence and a heavy weight to be carried indefinitely.
Silence in the digital age
In a world with such advanced communication, where the press of a button allows for instant communication via text, call, FaceTime and social media, we are still afraid to voice what matters the most — the things we don’t say.
Somehow, technology has made communication easier than ever before, but so much harder at the same time.
We type paragraphs and delete them. We wait for the bubble of three “typing” dots to appear, and when it never does, we consider it closure. This day and age has given us countless opportunities to communicate, and we choose to disconnect, withdrawing when our words are most needed. The fear of being left on “read” or getting “ghosted” has scared us away from necessary communication.
Some people will even post on social media, hoping someone will read between the lines. Both verbal and digital breaks in communication can hurt the same.
Necessity
Restraint in speaking is necessary when our words can cause harm. We should be thankful for the instinct that has us biting our tongue when our words start to affect others. The moment we take to rethink and breathe before eventually speaking isn't the kind of silence that harms, but the kind that controls. Words that are said cannot be unsaid. Having the strength and courage to hold back when the urge to yell, scream or cause hurt is very valuable.
It is vital to know the difference and recognize when our silence comes from fear rather than strength. Courage doesn’t always come from speaking instantly but from fostering patience when silence protects who we want to be, not who we were in the moment of anger and hurt.
It allows you to be bold, to ask yourself the questions when your voice chokes, when your throat makes that extra swallow, when you pause — thoughts racing — before saying another word. Determining whether to confess a buried thought and knowing it’s OK to say it, or saying it later. Finally admitting when something hurts.
Don’t eliminate silence, but don’t let it own you.
