Relationships
An Overlooked Couple Skill: Knowing When Silence Is Golden
To enhance your relationship, learn when it is best to say nothing.
Posted March 19, 2021 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Whether they have just begun dating or are celebrating a golden anniversary, most partners are aware that communication is a crucial component in relationship happiness and satisfaction. Dr. Marianne Legato, author of Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget, contends that without effective couple communication, there is no relationship at all.
One crucial but often overlooked communication skill for partners is knowing when your silence is the best option. This skill is not about suppression, quiet compliance, the silent treatment, dismissal, or neglect. Rather, it is a choice that can reflect attunement, empathy, regulation of emotions, and prioritizing the bond you share.
It is knowing those times when your comment, critique, opinion, or question not only fails to add value, but makes matters worse.
While there are always differences between partners relative to their personal histories and dynamics, here are some situations for which the decision to remain silent may be best for most.
Fueling the Fire
A real stumbling block, for old and young couples, is knowing when “enough is enough.” Too often we get trapped in the illusion that there is something to gain in having the last word. In almost all cases insisting on one more comment does nothing but escalate the tension and jeopardize resolution.
As Don Ferguson, author of Reptiles in Love, suggests, when partners are in fight-or-flight mode, logic is gone and no one wins. Knowing when to stop, to say nothing, is an important step in anger management. It prevents saying the unsayable – the words we can’t take back. It also prevents the dangerous escalation from verbal to physical aggression.
Breaking the Confidence
One ingredient in the intimacy of any couple is what they share as confidantes. Feeling safe, partners share dreams, frailties, imperfect body parts, traumatic memories, and self-doubts in a way they share with no one else.
Regardless of what others are disclosing, which family member is asking, or how much everyone is enjoying “partner bashing” – don’t take the bait.
Protecting each other’s confidence is a gift of trust only partners can give to each other.

Just Trying to Help
Despite the fact that most of us complain when people insist on giving us advice, we can barely contain ourselves when it comes to our partners. We love them. We are just trying to help.”
Actually, on close reflection, it is often our own sense of anxiety and helplessness in face of a partner’s distress that throws us into advice mode: We have to do something.
Listening with eye-to-eye contact and hand-to-hand reach is far more powerful than unsolicited advice. A partner who feels your support is likely to feel less stress, to feel more empowered to solve his/her problem, and to feel more willing to ask for help if needed.
Getting to Know You
As well as you think you know your partner, think again. What makes a relationship interesting and vital is recognizing that we still don’t know everything about our partners. Toward this end, one habit you may want to drop is the compulsion to finish your partner’s sentences. Trust me: Listening instead of speaking puts you in a position to hear what you may not expect. Finishing the other’s sentence shuts down present and future discussion and precludes more knowing.
Finishing a partner’s story or joke in public may leave them feeling derailed or embarrassed. Even if the audience goes along, the message is that your partner cannot handle it or that you need to be in control. Neither option is desirable.
Taking Up the Family Feud
It is inevitable that partners will complain about their families of origin and benefit from the support and understanding of their partner.
While that exchange is crucial, it is best not to assume that it entitles you to independently criticize, belittle, or put down your partner’s family.
Yes, you feel outraged and protective of your partner. But most people have complicated relationships with their families which may equate to a mix of conscious and unconscious love, hate, shame, and even hope. As trauma experts like Judith Herman suggest, survival for a child can mean blaming self rather than recognizing or allowing themselves to register the neglect or abuse they are experiencing.
We have all heard versions of the expression, “I can call my mother that, but you can’t call my mother that.”
No matter what your partner’s family is like, consider that it is never helpful to trash that family, particularly to children or friends. Too often it leaves a partner with shame and self-blame. (No one picks their family of origin).
Listening when your partner needs to vent or share pain about their family may be something no one ever did in their childhood. You are the difference. You are the someone who loves them and is willing to listen—a crucial step in connection and healing.
Sharing the Sounds of Silence
Often people remark that the way they know that they are really connected is that they can be together without saying anything. This is the time when no one is speaking but a great deal is being communicated. This is the place where both are safe enough in the relationship that they feel the other without having to use words to create the mood. This is the place where partners embrace the silence between them as intimate space.
As valuable as the words between us are, silence can be the most powerful communication of all.