Hey {{first_name|there}},
On Friday, I wrote about the difference between actually being calm and simply going still when something gets uncomfortable.
A few of you answered the poll, and the most common response was exactly that: I go still.
So I want to stay there for a minute.
Going quiet during an argument is not automatically a problem. Sometimes it is the smartest thing you can do. You know you are irritated. You know the first thing out of your mouth probably will not improve the evening. So you let the moment pass.
Fair enough.
The trouble starts when the moment passes, and you never go back to it.
Maybe your wife said something that bothered you at dinner. Maybe your boss volunteered you for something without asking. Maybe a friend made a joke at your expense, and you laughed because everybody else did.
You felt it. You had something to say. And then you decided it was easier not to.
By the next morning, you are already talking yourself out of bringing it up.
It wasn’t that serious.
I don’t want to make a thing out of it.
She probably didn’t mean it that way.
He was just joking.
Maybe all of that is true.
But there is another possibility.
You are hoping the other person somehow understood a conversation you never actually had.
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They only know what you gave them
This is where “easygoing” can become expensive.
The people around you learn how to treat you partly by watching what happens after they cross a line.
Not because everybody is running some sinister boundary test. Most people are much less organized than that.
They simply notice what gets a reaction and what does not.
If you say nothing when something bothers you, the reasonable assumption is that it didn't bother you much.
If it happens again and you say nothing again, now we have a pattern.
Meanwhile, you may be keeping an entirely different score in your head.
That is how resentment sneaks into relationships that otherwise look fine.
One person thinks, We’re good.
The other thinks, How many times am I going to have to put up with this?
And neither realizes they are having two completely different relationships.
The silence created the gap.
Not because silence is weak.
Because silence is vague.
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