Why do I feel the need to fill the silence?

A man in one of my groups came back from a date and described the moment it got hard. The date was going fine. Then there was a silence.

When you're sitting across from a complete stranger and you feel that you've run out of something to say, you just feel that you have to fill the space with noise. Which I don't like doing anyway, it also takes energy from me.

a man in one of my groups

He does the same thing with us. He gets five minutes for him, and about forty seconds in he starts heading back to the subject he can talk about without thinking about it, which for him is work. Ten years in the same job, he feels nothing for it, and it is still the only thing he easily turns to over drinks and during our calls.

I don't feel any emotion towards it or feelings towards it. It's just something that I have to do.

the same man

So he is not short of things to say. He has a subject on standby for any silence you leave him, and using it takes from him every time.

Why do I feel like I have to fill every silence?

Because you got rewarded for being easy to be around, and talking is the easiest way to keep being that. A silence in a conversation asks you to sit there with nothing to offer, and offering is how you have kept your place in a conversation for a lot of your life.

I did it for about thirty years, and I got rewarded for it, which is why I never looked at it.

I became just like an easygoing guy. When asked what I wanted, it always seemed like, nothing, whatever, I'm fine, I don't have a preference. Because having a preference would mean wanting something, and if you want something you've got to communicate it and you ask for it. And society rewards you for being an easygoing guy. So you never change it, right? But if you're easygoing, you don't want anything. You don't ask for anything. You don't get really much of what it is that you want.

Daniel Lawson

The man from the date heard that and put it on himself, unprompted, for the first time since I had known him.

I don't really ask for much myself either. I like to be this easygoing guy, because it's easier.

a man in one of my groups

Then he said what it takes from him, using the same word he had used about the noise on the date.

It traps a fair amount of my energy, which causes its own resistance.

the same man

So the noise is the easygoing habit, showing up in the two or three seconds where there is nothing yet to be easygoing about.

Why does silence bother me so much?

Because the gap in conversation is where the question comes, and that question is the one you have the least practice with. I have asked men what they want and watched what happens.

I ask you what it is that you really want, and I've tested this a couple of times now. You have a long pause and you're like, good question. It's almost like I don't quite know with a real sense of clarity.

Daniel Lawson

That pause is the first time in a while that the question has been pointed at you, and you don't have a practiced canned response to reply with. So you start talking instead, and that works, which is why you still do it.

That space initially is going to feel uncomfortable, but know that space is way shorter than it feels.

Daniel Lawson

The um buys you a moment to think. Take it out and the silence left behind is about half a moment.

What happens in the silence you didn't fill?

Somebody else uses it. The noise takes their moment, not yours.

If you're always filling the space, you're actually doing the other person a disservice, of having their moment to contribute.

Daniel Lawson

Some people don't think that quickly, and some just like bigger pauses. Another man in the same group speaks in long considered paragraphs with audible pauses while he gets to what he honestly means, and no-one there hears that as him running out.

In the group each five minutes is dedicated exclusively to an individual, so when he gets to the end of what he prepared he can stop and ask me for the next question. I will leave him in the discomfort for a while before I come and rescue him, because when he carries on without being rescued it starts giving everybody else permission to do the same.

And I don't know needs space rather than another question. Twice I have handed a man a new question when what he needed was for me to stop talking.

What do you find out when you stop talking?

What you wanted to say. And some weeks, that there was nothing there yet.

As a boy I got the nickname Daniel But Lawson, because I always had a reason, and years later it had just become more sophisticated. Once I saw it I stopped saying the buts, and I had not understood how much of my talking they were.

I just chose silence instead of saying it. And it was really hard. My life got really quiet. When I got good at stopping saying all that, I had way less to say. I just chose not to fill the gaps.

Daniel Lawson

It took me a long time to figure out what the positive was, and that is what the space gives you: months of having less to say, and having to figure out what you want to put there.

So it comes down to two things. Pause on purpose, knowing the silence is about half a moment. Then take the subject you want to get better at rather than the one you can already do in your sleep, and have that conversation with a friend before you need it.

Anyone that sounds articulate, I can promise you that they've already had that conversation before.

Daniel Lawson

On a date it is the same skill with nothing to prepare.

Rather than trying to fill the space, just be present to what is there.

Daniel Lawson

Common questions

Why can't I cope with silence?

Many of us can, and for a lot longer than we think. The silence is easy. What is hard is what it puts to you: you don't have anything to offer into it, and somebody might ask you what you want while you sit there. The silence itself is a couple of seconds, and the other person is usually still on your last sentence.

Why is silence awkward?

Because you are reading it as information about you, and the person across from you is not reading it at all. Watch for it and you will see somebody pause for a long while before they answer a real question, and you won't hear it as a failure in them.

Why do people talk just to fill space?

Because it works. Filling a silence gets you thanked for being easy company, and it keeps you from having to say what you want, which is the harder of the two. It takes the other person's moment and it takes your energy, and neither of those shows up in the second you are doing it.

Is this the same as not knowing what I want?

They sit next to each other. I don't know what I want anymore is what you find when the question is put to you and there is nothing there. This is the two seconds before that, where you talk so the question never gets asked.

Why doesn't knowing this stop me doing it?

Because you learned it in your nervous system a long time before your mind tells you something is off, so you can see it accurately and still fill the next silence. The reps are in the two or three seconds. Why doesn't self-awareness change anything? is the long answer.

If this resonates

If you are the person who keeps a conversation going when it gets thin, you are better at that than a lot of people, and everybody around you has had the benefit of it for years without asking you for it.

What comes next is leaving the next silence where it is, to find out what you say when you leave it alone, and to hear what the other person does with the moment you usually take.

And it goes better with a few others who will ask you next week what came out of it, and who are going after what they want in their conversations as well.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman are our groups where we have these conversations together.