The Psychology of ‘Shared Silence’ in Couples

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.

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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.”

Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Scientific American