Silence…………….. think about that word for a moment. What does that word mean to you? Often it can be associated with positivity. How many times have you heard your parents say I just want some peace and quiet? There are many songs out there about silence, a popular example is Ronan Keating’s ‘Say Nothing at all’. The silence I want to address is not the void left in a stadium after everybody has gone home or the peace and quiet a parent might try to obtain at the end of a busy day full of demands from their children.
The silence I want to discuss is the one where we say I will keep my mouth shut. Or when we say its fine! Fine is an example of how we use language today and say what we don’t actually mean. Fine is used all the time and rarely means what it suggests. An example of this might be when someone has agreed to do a big favour for somebody but has had to cancel their own plans to do it. The question will be asked ‘are you sure?’ and the response will often be ‘yes its fine.’ Or how about that time when somebody accidently breaks something valuable to you, it was an accident, you don’t want to make the person feel any worse. When they say ‘I’m so sorry’ often the response is ‘its fine, don’t worry.’
A place that often holds examples of silence is in the early stages of a relationship. Relationships are founded in a juvenile place, for example. ‘I love you’ ‘I love you too, we will be together forever’ ‘yes we will live happily ever after.’ ‘lets live in a big house with 2.4 children’ this is just a few examples of what I mean by juvenile place. So relationships are great to begin with, they are all born out of the things Walt Disney taught us, living happily ever after with a prince or princess in the presence of small furry animals and light blue coloured birds.
To stay in this place of adventure and excitement it is possible that a blind eye is turned to some of the things that are not so Walt Disney. An example of this could be after a couple of dates the woman has a bit too much to drink and becomes a lot more flirty than normal even with the waiter. The man in this partnership may think about their conversation a couple of hours before ie ‘so what would we call our first child?’ ‘where might be a nice place to go on family holidays?’
The man chooses not to challenge her flirty behaviour towards the waiter because it taints the Walt Disney image and there might be a disagreement. Another example could be the man speaks to her in a way that is disrespectful in public but rather than stand her ground and challenge the disrespect, she wants to continue with her Walt Disney version and chooses not to say anything.
Picture this, so the man starts going out a bit more frequently with his mates, he says to his partner ‘I am meeting my mate at the pub after work tonight.’ Inside she is thinking this is the third time this week but of course because she does not say how she truly feels, she will say ‘yeah that’s FINE!’ even though it is not. Then I imagine she will think about the time he disrespected her in public, along with the way he never clears up after himself, along with the fact he hasn’t introduced her to his family yet and the list goes on.
The way this is likely to present itself now is she will now bank all the things he has done wrong in her eyes and when she can’t take it no more she will present them all at the same time. The man on the other hand is likely not to say anything at all about the flirting with the waiter because men often choose to say nothing for a peaceful life as men quite stereo typically don’t talk about their feelings.
The negative side of this is the couple either eventually split up because they didn’t communicate their unhappiness for fear of tainting the Walt Disney image. Or they stay together and become passive aggressive, she may become more deliberately flirty in front of him to get his attention and to take him back to the place of conflict. Or she continues to bank the things he does and big rows may be out of context because enough is enough boils over at a time not fitting with the next committed offence in her eyes. For example, she is angry he was rude to her mum, but she banked it, she was angry that he didn’t interact with her friend when she came over, she is annoyed he doesn’t clean up the bathroom when he is finished but it’s when he walks in the house with muddy feet that she finally loses it.
He might choose not to say anything about what bothers him but stores up the things she does wrong inside and could then begin to resent her or doing anything for her. Or he could avoid her altogether and become passive aggressive by choosing to meet his friends more often after work instead of going home to his girlfriend.
So how does this cost us? What can happen as a result of keeping silent? There are ideologies out there to suggest illnesses can happen in the stomach for holding on to things. In the throat, disease and coughs can develop for not saying what we need to. Helplessness can set in as a result of not dealing with conflicts.
These are just a few scenarios of how keeping quiet about the things that we don’t agree with can present themselves. Of course the male and female role could operate vice versa but I have chose to use stereotypical behaviour. Stereo typing is of course not an exact science but in my experience the way I have written this blog is using likely behaviour from either sex.
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