When Silence Feels Like Rejection

Mom and I, circa 1995

Silence can be so triggering for me, and I’m beginning to understand why.

This morning, I was getting my daughter ready for school. It’s Friday, which is my day off, so there was really no excuse for us to be late. And yet…there I was. I’d done her hair, she got dressed. We were coming downstairs. I was shuffling around, rushing, trying to get us out the door, getting a little snippy because now the clock was clocking and I knew we were cutting it close.

My husband looked at me.

That was it. He looked at me. He didn’t say anything.

Now, Adult Me knows that look. That look says, Babe…you’re cutting it close. I’m a little nervous. You gotta be more mindful of the time.

And, sidenote, we DID make it on time LOL. She was not late. Thank God, because the perfectionist in me was already preparing to make her first tardy mean entirely too much about my ability to mother.

But anyway.

Back to the silence.

My husband didn’t say anything cruel to me. He didn’t yell. He didn’t criticize me. He didn’t withdraw his love. He just looked at me. But the little girl in me heard something completely different in the silence. She heard: You disappointed me. And underneath that: Now I’m going to pull away from you.

Sometimes the Present Is Touching Something Much Older

This is one of those places where being a therapist does not exempt me from being human. I can understand something clinically and still feel it deeply. I can know my husband loves me and simultaneously notice a younger part of me bracing for the loss of connection. Both can be happening.

Clinically, we might talk about this through the lens of attachment, nervous-system activation, or relational learning. Our brains are meaning-making machines. When something in the present resembles an emotionally significant experience from the past, our bodies can respond to what the moment used to mean before we have time to determine what it means now. That is what I’m learning about silence. Silence, for me, has rarely felt neutral. Growing up, when I did something wrong—or something clearly outside of what was preferred—there could be disappointment, correction, and then…nothing. No real reconnection. At least not enough to inform my adult self that silence doesn’t mean withdrawing love.

No: You made a mistake, but we’re okay.

No: I’m disappointed in what happened, but I’m not disappointed in who you are.

No: Come here. Let’s talk about it.

No clear signal that the relationship had survived the rupture.

It would just kind of…linger.

And I want to be careful here because I don't believe my parents were intentionally trying to teach me that love disappears when you disappoint someone. Particularly with my mom, I can see things differently as an adult than I could as a child. She couldn't give me tools she didn't have. She could not consistently model emotional repair if nobody had taught her how to repair. I can hold compassion for that truth. And I can also acknowledge what my nervous system learned from it, because as children, we don't interpret the intentions of adults. We interpret our experiences. Somewhere along the way, a younger version of me learned: When somebody I love gets quiet, something is wrong. And maybe: Something is wrong with me.

For Some of Us, Being “Good” Became a Form of Safety

There is another layer here that feels especially important when I think about the Black women I sit with clinically—and the Black women I want SoulFULL by Design to speak to.

So many of us learned how to read a room before we learned how to read ourselves. We learned faces. Tone. Energy. The sigh. The pause. The look. The shift in somebody's voice when they said, “I'm fine,” but we knew they absolutely were not fine.

Some of that can come from family dynamics. Some of it comes from being girls taught to prioritize relationships and other people's feelings. And for Black girls specifically, there can be additional pressure to mature quickly, behave appropriately, represent ourselves well, not give anybody a reason, not be “too much,” and know how to carry ourselves. We learn to anticipate. We learn to perform. We learn to get it right. We learn that being responsible, accomplished, pleasant, helpful, spiritually grounded, emotionally intelligent—or some combination of all of it—can keep things steady.

And when you've learned safety through performance, silence can feel excruciating, because silence gives the perfectionistic part of you nothing to work with. No instructions. No rubric. No correction. Just space. That space gets filled with questions, like: What did I do? Are you mad at me? Did I say something? Should I apologize? Are we okay? Do you still love me? Are you leaving?

Part of us may want to believe that’s just intuition, but what it actually is, is hypervigilance dressed up as emotional intelligence.

The Hardest Silence Is the Silence Without an Opportunity for Repair

I've had a few people I love go quiet on me recently. Different people. Different circumstances. Different reasons—some of which I know and probably some that I don't. Those individual stories aren't really the point here. The silence is. I've realized how difficult it is for me when someone I care about becomes distant and I don't know why.

If I've hurt you, I want the opportunity to know that. If I've disappointed you, tell me. If something I did landed differently than I intended, I want space to hear it. Have I always been in the space to hold these truths…honestly, no. But life and my own personal work has expanded my capacity for these truths, because I know how important they are to maintaining and nurturing relationships with people I love. Not because I believe I am entitled to immediate forgiveness. Not because every relationship has to be restored. Not because reconciliation is always possible, healthy, or even appropriate. But because healthy relationships require room for rupture and repair.

Rupture is inevitable. We are going to misunderstand each other. We're going to say the wrong thing. We're going to miss a need. We're going to disappoint each other. We're going to have seasons when one person has less capacity than the other. Sometimes there isn't even a villain in the story. Sometimes life is just life-ing. But repair requires information. It requires some willingness to say: Hey, this hurt me. Hey, I need some space. Hey, I'm overwhelmed right now and I'm pulling inward. This isn't about you.

Or even: I don't have the capacity to talk about this yet, but I don't want you wondering whether we're okay. 

That is relational care too.

And Yet…Other People's Silence Is Not Mine to Decode

This is the part I'm still learning. Silence does not mean the same thing to everybody. Someone else's silence might mean disappointment. But it might also mean overwhelm. Grief. Avoidance. Fear. Confusion. Exhaustion. Limited capacity. A need for space. Their own attachment wounds. Or something happening in their life that has absolutely nothing to do with me. If every time somebody gets quiet I automatically conclude, I did something wrong, I am placing myself at the center of a story I don't actually have enough information to understand.

That isn't accountability. That's internalization. There is a difference. Accountability says: If I have caused harm, I am willing to examine it, own it, apologize, and change my behavior. Internalization says: Something feels different, therefore I must have caused it. Those are not the same thing. Learning the difference has become part of my own SoulFULL work.

SoulFULL Doesn't Mean Never Being Triggered

For me, becoming SoulFULL isn't about becoming so healed that silence never bothers me again. I don't think healing works like that. It's becoming grounded enough to notice: Oh. This feels familiar. This is touching that old place. The little girl in me thinks connection is about to disappear.

And then Adult Me gets to enter the conversation. Adult Me can say: We don't actually know what this silence means. We don't have to chase connection to prove we're worthy of it. We can ask a question. We can communicate. We can apologize when an apology belongs to us. We can tolerate not knowing. We can grieve when someone doesn't give us the opportunity for repair. And perhaps hardest of all: We can accept that sometimes we will offer repair and the other person will not participate.

That's painful.

Especially when you are someone who wants to make things right… But reconciliation requires more than one person. I can take responsibility for my side of a relationship. I cannot do both sides.

Maybe Repair Is Part of the Legacy We Get to Change

The older I get, the more I think about what I want my daughter to experience differently. Not perfection. Lord knows she isn't getting that from me. I will disappoint her. I will misunderstand her. I'll get frustrated. I'll probably give her the look. She will absolutely do things I don't like. But I want her to know something I didn't always know: Disconnection does not have to mean abandonment.

We can be upset and still belong to each other. I can disagree with your behavior and remain connected to you. We can have a rupture and come back. We can say: That wasn't okay. And then also say: Come here. 

That matters. So much.

Repair teaches a child something perfection never can: Love can survive my humanity. And maybe, just maybe… that's what some of us grown Black women are still learning too.

That we can disappoint someone without becoming a disappointment. That someone can need space without it automatically meaning rejection. That we can make a mistake without scrambling to prove we're still good. That we can be accountable without abandoning ourselves. That we don't have to interpret every silence as a verdict. And also—that we are allowed to desire relationships where communication and repair are mutual values. Both things can be true.

I can work on the part of me that experiences silence as rejection and acknowledge that prolonged, unexplained silence can genuinely hurt.

I can respect someone else's need for space and recognize my own need for relational clarity.

I can understand why someone struggles with repair and decide what I need in relationships moving forward.

That's the nuance. That's the muck of loving people. And I think that's part of what it means to live SoulFULLy. 

Not bypassing the wound. Not making somebody else responsible for healing it. Not pretending the present doesn't sometimes touch the past…but learning to recognize when the little girl in us is interpreting the room—and lovingly reminding her that Adult Us is here now.

This morning, my husband was just looking at the clock. But something much younger in me was listening for the sound of love leaving…and I'm learning that when she starts listening for that sound, I don't have to shame her. I can remind her: Silence is information, but silence is not automatically rejection. Someone else's silence does not get to decide whether I am worthy of love.