A quiet reckoning with my old habit of fixing too soon.
--From Olga’s sacred Relationship Healings collection.
For most of my life, I’ve been the one who talks first.
The one who softens the moment. The one who reaches out. The one who bridges the silence, even when I didn’t create it. It wasn’t something I did with resentment. It was automatic. A reflex.
When the air felt tense or uncertain, I filled it. When someone pulled away, I leaned in. And when something felt off, I took responsibility for bringing us back to center, sometimes before the other person even noticed we had drifted.
I didn’t realize how much of myself I was offering up just to keep the peace. How often I was patching things with words before anyone else had even admitted something was cracked.
Until one day, I didn’t.
What happened that day
It wasn’t a big argument. Just one of those small misalignments you could almost pretend didn’t happen.
We were in the same room, but I could feel the static in the air. That quiet, unspoken tension that hums just beneath the surface when something’s not quite right. I knew the old version of me would have already filled the space. I would’ve said something light. Maybe made a kind comment.
To signal: “We’re okay, right?”
But today… I didn’t.
I felt that familiar urge rise in me, the one that wants to fix, to ease, to reassure. And instead of acting on it, I just… noticed it. And let it pass. I stayed quiet. Not cold. Not distant. Just still.
I let the silence stay between us. I didn’t rush to tidy it up. I didn’t rescue the moment. I didn’t offer myself as the bridge this time.
And in that stillness, something inside me felt both terrified and free. Like I was standing in a new version of myself.
What This Moment Taught Me
For a long time, I associated love with effort, especially the kind that moves first.
I thought being emotionally available meant being emotionally responsible. I believed that if I could feel the distance, it was my role to close it. To soften it. To reach across the silence and make sure we were okay.
But what I’ve come to understand is that real love, sustainable, balanced love —needs room for both people to show up. It cannot grow if one person is always holding the emotional weight while the other drifts in and out at their own pace.
A connection built on constant reaching can look strong from the outside, but on the inside, it quietly erodes the one doing all the reaching.
Silence, I’ve learned, isn’t always a sign of disconnection.
Sometimes it’s something far more sacred. Sometimes, silence is the first honest space you’ve ever shared. Where no one is performing, no one is fixing, no one is rushing back into comfort. Just presence. Just pause. Just a breath.
And when I stopped speaking first, when I stopped rushing to close the gap — I created space for something else to rise.
Choice.
Accountability.
Balance.
The moment didn’t magically resolve itself. But it didn’t need to. What shifted wasn’t just between us, it was inside me. I realized I could stay present without doing all of the work. I could care deeply without overextending myself. And I could trust that love, if it’s real, knows how to find its way back—even without a trail of words leading the way.
There is something profoundly healing in the decision not to carry it all.
To let someone else rise.
To let the silence stretch without assuming it means you’ve been abandoned.
And maybe, sometimes, healing begins not in what we say, but in what we finally allow ourselves to hold back.
Conclusion
There’s a quiet strength in learning to listen to yourself first.
So many of us were taught that love means explaining, soothing, fixing, especially when the air feels tense. But not every moment asks for a response. Not every shift in energy needs to be filled.
Sometimes, what’s needed most is a pause. A breath. A chance to feel your center before speaking from habit.
Silence, when chosen with awareness, can become a kind of clarity.
It doesn’t mean withdrawal. It doesn’t mean disconnection.
It simply means: I’m here. I’m listening to you, but also to myself.
When you stop talking just to hold the moment together, you might start hearing what your body has been trying to say all along.
You may begin to notice where your energy has been overextended. Where you’ve been over-explaining yourself.
Or where you’ve been trying to prove something that love, in its true form, never required.
This isn’t about withholding.
It’s about letting the truth breathe before it’s spoken.
It’s about honoring the space before the repair.
If you’re in one of those moments—between tension and tenderness, between closeness and confusion—maybe give yourself the gift of stillness. Not as a test. Not as a wall. Just as a way to return to your voice…before offering it again.
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