The goal in Dorothy Kaufmann and my Workshop for Couples is to increase intimacy between partners. With this in mind, we try to help them confide to each other what’s on their minds. Intimacy is saying what’s on your mind and feeling your partner understands. And it’s your partner saying what’s on his or her mind and feeling you understand.

But what about people who are reluctant to say what’s on their minds or doubt their partner will understand? We devote a section of our workshop to legitimizing their experience—making understandable their hesitation to talk. We turn the discussion of this hesitation into itself an occasion for intimacy. It can be intimacy-creating for partners to confide fears and reluctance.

We present the workshop participants with the following reasons why people might hesitate to express to their partners what is on their minds—whether it’s a feeling about their partners or about somebody or something else. We ask them to circle the number in front of those reasons that pertain to them and then discuss with their partners what they circled.

You don’t want to say what’s on your mind because:

  1. You want to forget it. For some people, it’s relieving to talk to their partners about something upsetting that happened, for example at work. For other people, talking about it just sends them back into it and leaves them feeling worse. They don’t want to think about the issue, much less talk about it.
  2. It gets you angrier. For some people, expressing to their partners how angry they feel, whether it’s anger toward their partners or toward a third person, helps them get over it. For other people, expressing this anger just gets them angrier.
  3. It induces a feeling of shame rather than relief in getting it off their chest.

You fear being (or being seen as):

  1. Boring. You doubt that what you have to say would interest your partner.
  2. Lecturing. Your partner has told you s/he sometimes feels lectured to by you.
  3. Whiny, complaining, needy, or weak
  4. Negative, depressed, dark, or pessimistic
  5. Fearful, anxious, obsessive, controlling, or nagging

You fear that your partner will:

  1. Feel hurt
  2. Get defensive
  3. Withdraw
  4. Think less of you
  5. Get angry (patronizing, contemptuous), which may lead to a fight
  6. Dismiss it, won’t listen, won’t understand, doesn’t want to hear it, will cut you off, will turn it into something about him/her
  7. Use it against you later
  8. Try to fix things when you want him or her to listen to how you feel
  9. Take the other person’s side if you describe a run-in you had with someone

You:

  1. Doubt the importance of what you have to say; it seems so minor. Different people have different criteria of how important what they’re thinking has to be to reach the threshold of actually putting it to words. As Ed Muskie said, “We in Maine speak only when it’s an improvement on silence.”
  2. Need to be reassured of your partner’s interest. Since you doubt your partner’s interest or that you have anything important to say, you need to be drawn out, that is, for your partner to ask for your comment and then seem clearly interested in what you say.
  3. Are concerned about trespassing. You don’t want to give unasked for advice or offer an unwanted opinion.
  4. Talk only when you’ve figured out what you think in contrast to those who talk in order to figure out what they think.

You deal with:

  1. Feeling tired, hungry, or out of sorts by becoming quiet in contrast to those who deal with such by becoming more talkative.
  2. Feeling angry at, disappointed by, or distant from your partner by disengaging in contrast to those who deal with such moments by engaging, reaching out, or complaining.
  3. Arguments with your partner that seem to be going nowhere by seeking to end them in contrast to those who want to keep talking until the argument is resolved.

You have a:

  1. Family or cultural background in which people didn’t talk much about their thoughts and feelings so you never learned to do so.
  2. Habit of being (a way of being in the world) in which you keep important thoughts and feelings to yourself. It often doesn’t occur to you to say something about them. You keep your own counsel.
  3. Philosophy of life (a picture of the person you want to be) in which it’s important not to cause other people discomfort or ruin their mood. You want to be a positive force. So you hesitate to express anything negative or critical.

In all the other exercises in our workshop, the more talkative partner has more to say.  But in this particular exercise the less talkative partner comes alive. S/he circles many more items and talks expansively about what it’s like to close down.

This workshop task follows the spirit of Collaborative Couple Therapy, which is to create an intimate conversation out of whatever is of concern to the partners at the moment, which can include the wish not to talk.