“Are You Filling the Void?”

Have you considered whether or not you are filling the void? I found myself confronted with this questions while walking my dogs.

The inspiration came as a by-product of listening to a podcast addressing how some people in business destroy their reputations by not getting back to customers. Although they may be busy, the lack of communication leaves a void. The customer’s imagination runs wild when there is no communication. If they can imagine anything bad happening, they do. They begin assuming the worst, all because the business owner was silent.

You may at times find yourself being silent in your marriage, especially with affair situations. Your silence may be a result of you avoiding some unpleasant topic or not knowing what to say, avoiding a conflict or thinking that giving the matter some time will make it ‘go away’. You may even think that being silent is a way to keep from hurting your spouse and you would be making a HUGE assumption of the wrong kind.

When you are silent, something will fill the silence. If you wonder where your spouse ‘got that idea’, the answer may lie in your silence. You did not speak, so they did. If you wanted them to have a different idea, you might should have said something.

Being silent does not delay conflict. Silence only takes the conflict to another level.

If you are the silent type, this means you will have to work at communicating with your spouse. If you are just avoiding unpleasantness, your silence only gives your spouse more resentment, issues and misunderstandings. Your silence gives them a huge ‘fill in the blank’ for their imagination to fill as they please. When you stay silent, their filled in answer becomes the ‘correct answer’ by default.

In some cases, it becomes a ‘default reality’. You may assume that by saying nothing, they have nothing to hold against you. In a legal world, that may be true. You forget that you are in a relationship, which means you are dealing with relationship reality, NOT legal reality.

In relationship reality, when you are silent, they choose what is going on. They fill ‘the void’ with whatever they want. When you stay silent, it only serves to validate their assumptions. You created the empty space with your silence. They are only filling the void of the uncomfortable silence.

Let that sink in for a moment. They very problem that you may have with your spouse making things up or thinking the wrong things, may actually be a matter of their manufacturing a reality because you stayed silent. You created the monster being used against you. They are only filling the void created by your choice of remaining silent.

Since this is relationship reality rather than legal reality, your silence is used against you.  When you are silent, your spouse gets to pick and choose a conversation, which may not be the conversation you wanted. The go on filling the void with whatever they want. Your silence only serves to validate and condone what they assume.

Being silent is not good in business relationships, nor is it good in your marriage relationships. At least in business, you can dismiss things with some money and attribute it to ‘doing business’. In your marriage relationship, silence can not be dismissed with money and assumptions about marriage.

Rather than allow the voids to damage your marriage, you can do something about that. The Affair Recovery Workshop includes sections on what to talk about and how to go about it.

Best Regards,

Jeff

 

You Might Also Like To Read:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Popular Posts