The Psychology of ‘Shared Silence’ in Couples

The Psychology of ‘Shared Silence’ in Couples

By Francine Russo & Knowable Magazine

A couple sits together on a sunny park bench. He appears to be studying the passing clouds; she’s absorbed in a novel. Some passersby might think, How sweet. Others might see them as bleak.

They could be either. Until now, scientists have mostly ignored shared silences between romantic partners, concentrating on verbal exchanges: how to discuss feelings, negotiate needs and deal with conflict. But according to new research, silence can be a powerful communicator for couples.

In a series of four studies described in Motivation and Emotion in 2024, psychologist Netta Weinstein of the United Kingdom’s University of Reading and her colleagues asked partnered college students and adults to write about experiences of silence with their significant others.

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Weinstein and her colleagues hypothesized that silences would differ in meaning and in the emotion they generated based on what motivated them. The research team sorted shared silences into three types. Intrinsic, or intimate, silences arise naturally and comfortably between mates, while introjected, or anxious, silences occur when one person feels uncomfortable speaking, and external, or hostile, silences can come from one partner’s wish to shut out or punish the other. Silences can also be spontaneous, or random.

“We don’t always need to fill up the space with conversation: Silent moments can be powerful ways to connect.” —Netta Weinstein, psychologist

In Weinstein’s investigations, different groups of subjects reflected on a recent silent episode in their current relationship, or on daily silent episodes over 14 days. Some participants were randomly assigned to write about a particular kind of silence, based on what motivated it, and one group wrote about a wordless episode from a bad relationship in their past. Participants reported how frequently such silences occurred, their emotions during them — peaceful, depressed, bored or sad, for example — and how they felt about their relationship.

To indicate why they were not speaking, they could choose among such statements as: “Because I feared he/she would be mad at me if I said something,” “Because I cherish moments when I am able to be next to him/her even if we aren’t speaking,” “Because he/she wanted me to be silent,” “Because I wanted him/her to feel bad” and “Because I didn’t need to speak for my partner to get me.”

Three significant findings emerged from the studies. First — unsurprisingly — the reason for a silence was a major factor in the episode’s impact on the partners’ emotions and relationship. Couples who saw their silence as anxious or hostile reported less positive and more negative emotion, for example. Second, intrinsic silences that felt comfortable were associated with many positive emotions and high ratings of how well the relationship fulfilled their needs.

The third finding was that during these intrinsic silences, positive feelings were “low-arousal” — they were relaxed and peaceful rather than happy or excited.

Weinstein says she finds this last result intriguing. Until now, she says, researchers had reported that this kind of peacefulness could be achieved only in solitude, but it appears that couples who feel safe thinking their own thoughts while enjoying the pleasure of togetherness seem to experience it too. The findings show couples that they don’t have to separate to enjoy alone time.

Another overall finding, she adds, “is that we don’t always need to fill up the space with conversation: Silent moments can be powerful ways to connect.”

Weinstein and colleagues “are really looking at a topic that has received not nearly as much attention as it deserves,” says Northwestern University psychological scientist Claudia Haase, who wrote a 2023 article in the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology on how couples become better at managing their emotions as they grow older. In her current work, she studies couples interacting in a lab. Although she has not specifically studied mutual silences, she believes these are filled with meaning, from the refusal to speak during stonewalling to the wordlessness that indicates, she says, “a sense that we are safe with each other.”

Weinstein notes that partners pay a lot of attention to how what they say can hurt or help their mate, but rarely think about the ramifications of silences. Partners might learn something important, for example, if they check out what their quietness means for their mate, Haase adds: One person’s comfortable silence may leave their mate feeling ignored or shut out.

Couples can also plan together to enable intimate silent experiences — perhaps doing something together that they both enjoy, such as reading, hiking up a trail to a breathtaking vista or stretching out and listening to a Chopin sonata. “Those moments,” Weinstein says, “are rich with love and closeness and connection.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.