When Silence Needs To Be Golden

Women often make the mistake of believing that men must share everything in their heads for a relationship to work. However, this belief is a fallacy. Men and women communicate differently. Women tend to have better verbal skills while men are typically more comfortable doing physical tasks. And men's and women's expectations regarding communications are also different.

When a woman wants to know what her partner is thinking, it does not occur to her that he may not necessarily want to share his thoughts with her. A woman confronted by silence is likely to see such behaviour as shutting her out or there is a lack of closeness or trust when neither presumption is likely to be true.

As two people enter a relationship, the critical dynamic of you, me and us comes to be. Us does not mean two individuals have become one entity and individual identities are suddenly cast aside. For a relationship to thrive, individual identities must be maintained. Thus, it is important to recognize that individual privacy, even in an intimate relationship, must be allowed to exist.

Men, not all of course, need to have and be in their own space whether it be physical or emotional. Often, he needs to work things out in his head without your intervention. He may or may not share the process with you. It's okay. When he's ready and wants to, he'll share his thoughts with you. However, you are not entitled to his thoughts. (Nor is he entitled to know your every thought.) All you can do is offer him support if he wants it (e.g. If you want to talk, let me know.) What he doesn't want is constant harping about not sharing his deepest emotions with you or pestering. His silence does not mean he does not care about you, or the relationship; nor does it mean he doesn't love you or that there is a problem.

He just needs to be in his space.