A Stoic Rule for the Neurotic
How to stop overreacting to silence from your partner.
Here’s a couple of questions for you…
- Does any amount of silence between you and your partner bother you?
- Are you uncomfortable with being uncertain of what your partner is thinking a vast majority of the time?
If you answered yes to these questions, well, then what you’re actually uncomfortable with is being in your own skin.
As someone who has struggled with low self-esteem and codependency throughout their life, I’m quite familiar with what it’s like to be unnerved by silence from your partner — even if it’s just for 10 minutes. I too have been habitually neurotic in the past by asking are you okay? or is everything okay? more than a few times a day.
What most of us don’t realize is that we’re pushing our partner even further from us by engaging in this type of behavior. We may think we’re alleviating our paranoia. Or we may feel as if we’re scratching an itch by knowing for sure, in that moment, that everything is okay. But what happens the next time they’re seemingly quiet out of nowhere? Is that the time you did something wrong? Is it within the same span of ten minutes where you think you may have said something you shouldn’t have? Are they silently reassessing what…
