The Silence of Men

"A man never gets rid of what he is silent about." (Karel Čapek)

Illustration: Markéta Profeldová

My mom used to say about her dad (my grandfather) that he was a silent man. But when he finally said something, it was just right.

"A man is silent. He keeps being silent. And then he kills himself," Czech psychiatry legend Cyril Höschl described his experience with men showing signs of depression.

Two Finns are sitting at a bar. They are sitting quietly, drinking. When the waiter brings the third beer, the first raises his glass and says "cheers." The second replies, "are we here to drink or to talk?"

Silence matters

The world is full of silent men. The still faces of cowboys and Indians in Western movies, monks in monasteries where they don't speak a word for weeks, fathers and husbands establishing a "quiet household," the impenetrable expressions of chess and poker players.

It almost seems that for male culture, being able to remain silent is a superpower, motivated by clear reasons, often expressed in short catchphrases. Talk less, do more. Don't talk until you have something to say. Think first.

Of course, women are silent too, and their time spent in silence is probably not shorter than men's. But I am far from making any objective gender comparisons. I just want to share my own experience with male silence, which came to me as strikingly different from female silence during observations from the saddle of my bike.

Eyes behind the wheel

I ride a bike every day. To the office, to the shopping mall, to visit friends, to pick up my children from school or from sport club, every place in Brno is reachable by bike for me. I always have a simple screwdriver, a rag and a spare T-shirt in my backpack.

For safety reasons, I try to make eye contact with drivers as much as possible. I can see if they see me, whether I'm passing them from the right in a line of traffic or when they're about to turn off a side road onto the main road I'm on. It's in these moments, in those fleeting glances, that I've noticed I am projecting different emotions into them depending on whether they're a man or a woman.

Usually, when I look into men's eyes, I feel like they're angry with me. As if I've done something wrong, as if I'm getting in their way or bothering them with my way of cycling. In the relation that develop in less than a second, when our eyes meet, I tend to perceive them the superiors, the ones who are evaluating me.

This doesn't happen to me with women. The eyes of female drivers are either neutral, or I see flashes of understanding, sometimes even care and compassion in them. This rather striking difference intrigued me, and it was clear to me that rather than with gender differences it had to do with my personal history.

Losing

Back in 1991, I was twelve and after winning the local district tennis championship, I nominated myself for the regional one in Havlíčkův Brod. My brother, who was two years older, had already won this round and was preparing for the national championship. I wanted to follow in his footsteps. However, what I probably wanted most was the recognition and pride of my father, who trained us both.

Going to Havlíčkův Brod with just my dad was a victory in itself. Usually, as a whole family, my brother and I would go to tournaments in different parts of Czechoslovakia and split into two teams there. My brother and dad went to register, walk along the courts, and basically prepare for the match, while my mom and I went for a walk in the tourist area, visit the local museum, or climb the lookout tower.

Today was finally the day I was on my father's team.

I'm standing on the tennis court, waiting for my opponent to serve, and I can hear my heart beating fast. I can barely move, my legs are tense and heavy. I quickly throw the first two balls out of the court, my heart rate still increasing slightly and my mouth feels dry. But my eyes are watering. I turn my head to my dad, who is standing behind the fence. With a quick movement of his hand, he signals me to come to him. "Don't stand still. You have to move," he says in a quiet, but urgent and slightly nervous voice. I nod my head, but I can't say anything, I'm afraid I'll start crying. I turn quickly and walk back to the baseline.

My legs on the baseline become concrete pillars bolted to the clay court. When my opponent hits the ground before serving, I try to jump up a little, but it's more of a parody of movement. I quickly turn to my father's face and see that he has lowered his gaze. He is angry, I am saying to myself, he thinks I am not listening to him. At that moment, it is clear to me that I am going to lose.

I lost. It was a quick match. My father was behind the fence the whole time, with a still face, silent. He did not make a single gesture. When the game was over, he just said: "Let's go." We got in the car and drove home. I was hunched over in the back seat, but I would prefer to be in the trunk of the car. I do not know if I cried, but I definitely wanted to. I was afraid that my father would start screaming. But he did not scream. He did not say anything. I understood that he was so terribly angry that he could not even speak.

We arrived home without a single word. My mother prepared dinner for both of us. With understanding, care and compassion.

The Paradox of Silence

The advantage of silence is that you don't have to speak. And when you don't speak, it's hard to blame you, criticize you, or argue with you. Simply put, when you remain silent, you risk yourself less than the person who speaks. You avoid conflict more easily, and it may seem that you are managing the situation better because you don't get "emotionally blown away."

When I discovered these advantages sometime during my adolescence, I began to use silence as my favorite communication strategy. I found that when I don't talk, others usually fill the space, and in the end, there's no need to say anything. I use this strategy especially when I have a hard time formulating something, when I can't find the right words or don't want to look for them.

However, I have to emphasize that this is usually not fully conscious strategy. Often these are situations when I am in great tension, when my vocal cords, throat, lips, ... in short, all the parts of the body that we use for talking are clenched. In a better version, I can still keep my attention on the other person and listen to them, but I am no longer able to formulate my own thoughts, I can't think of what to say. I run out of words.

If this kind of silence could speak, it would say: "I am listening to you, but that is all I am capable of right now."

In a worse case scenario, I can't even listen anymore. I completely disconnect. I dissociate, as they say in psychiatry. It is as if I were floating above the whole situation at that moment, waiting for it to end.

If this silence could speak, it would say: "I am not here."

But I also keep quiet when I am afraid of hurting the other person. Usually, in situations when I am hurt by another person's actions, I have a tendency to defend myself or counterattack, but I forbid myself to follow this tendency. I have always considered this my advantage, perhaps even with a slight sense of moral superiority. I was proud of myself for being able to stay calm, not to be overcome with emotions (like others), and for being able to remain calm.

If this silence could speak, it would say: "I refuse to fight with you."

However, what may seem like a noble act of peace is, paradoxically, an even more insidious and potentially powerful weapon. At that moment, I keep a lot of harsh words to myself, but I provide almost no response. And we know very well that no response means no dialogue. And no dialogue means no life. By settling into the perspective of the one who is silent, I forgot the perspective of the one who is subjected to silence and who at that moment becomes a hostage of silence. I forgot the perspective of the boy on the tennis court who says to himself: "He's so angry he can't even scream."

The Blank Whiteboard

Silence is like a blank whiteboard onto which anyone can project anything. When I was twelve, I projected my anger onto my dad's blank board. Great destructive anger. I don't know when we started talking again, but it didn't take long. Maybe that evening or the next morning. Then a few days later, my dad was bursting with jokes again, making up games and competitions for my brother and me, he was simply the perfect dad we had always known him to be.

But we never talked about what happened in Havlíčkův Brod. And similar periods of un-explained silence repeated themselves in the following years. Once we didn't even say hello for half a year, after I refused to complete a task he gave me. All that time I was afraid that one day he would lose control and explode. I was sure that he was full of rage and knew exactly why he was silent.

But when I'm the one who's silent, I usually can't articulate what I'm feeling, which is exactly the fundamental reason for my silence. I have a whole bunch of feelings and voices inside me that are trying to get out, but they have nowhere to go, because I'm terribly afraid of bringing them to light in such a form. Not only do I not know how to articulate them, I can't even be with them. I walk away from them and focus all my energy on trying to look as neutral as possible, because I'm ashamed of what's going on inside me.

In doing so, I unknowingly become a projection screen. And I have no idea what comedy or thriller others will start projecting onto that screen.

So perhaps these are the roots of my bicycle reactions to the drivers in their cars. Although our eyes meet for only a few seconds, my first thought is that the men behind the wheel know exactly why they are silent. They are angry because I am doing something wrong. Or rather: I am doing something they do not want.

But if I am the man who is silent, the opposite is happening inside me. I have a sea of ​​feelings, thoughts, questions that are struggling, fighting with each other, and I cannot find a way to name it or to translate this mess into words.

To simplify it even further: while others may read silence as a simple monologue, the one who is silent may be experiencing a very difficult dialogue.

Welcoming silence

In dialogical practices, we know how important silence is for dialogue. For all involved. In silence, we have the opportunity to compare what we hear from others with what our inner voices express. In order to create space for this inner dialogue, it is appropriate to let other parts of our body act than those we use when speaking.

If we stop moving our jaws, lips and tongue and give our vocal cords a rest, we free up space for, for example, our eyes, hands, shoulders, esophagus, stomach, pelvis. Breathing is also easier and clearer when we do not speak. In moments of silence, not only blood and oxygen can circulate better in our body, but also all the processes that we need to smoothly absorb everything that is happening within us.

With moments of silence, we can undoubtedly enrich our dialogue, develop it to new levels. But only if we share our inner dialogue with others, if we do not keep it in secret. Otherwise, we risk becoming a projection screen that can be threatening and frightening for others.

It is certainly not the case that all silence needs to be explained. There are special forms of silence that usually appear only in special relationships and that do not need to be separated from dialogue. Rather, they are its highest form.

Patti Smith expresses this perfectly in her memorial text, where she writes about her deceased friend:

"We didn’t have to talk then, and that is real friendship. Never uncomfortable with silence, which, in its welcome form, is yet an extension of conversation."

Welcoming silence is perhaps the type of dialogue that we subconsciously aim for in our close relationships. From this perspective, the silence of men and women would not be an abnormality, disorder or deviation, but a desirable state, which we first need to "talk into".