The psychology of awkward silences, vulnerability and saying the wrong thing
When was the last time you typed out a message, read it back, deleted half of it, rewrote it and then waited until you felt completely happy before pressing send?
Now compare that with a face-to-face conversation.
There’s no backspace button. No opportunity to spend ten minutes deciding exactly how to phrase your response. Sometimes we stumble over our words. Sometimes there’s an uncomfortable silence. Sometimes we realise halfway through a sentence that it isn’t coming out quite as we intended.
And perhaps that’s part of what makes real conversation so valuable.
In her book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, psychologist and researcher Sherry Turkle explores what may be happening as more of our communication takes place through technology. Her argument isn’t simply that phones or messaging are “bad”. Instead, she asks us to consider what we might lose when carefully controlled digital communication begins to replace the unpredictable experience of talking to another person.
We’ve become used to having an edit button
Digital communication gives us something face-to-face conversation rarely does: control.
We can think before responding. Rewrite a message. Leave it unanswered while we decide what to say. Choose which parts of ourselves to reveal and, to some extent, manage how we’re perceived.
There are obvious benefits to this. Having time to formulate our thoughts can be incredibly helpful, particularly when something is difficult to express.
But Turkle asks an interesting question: what happens when we start to prefer this control?
A real conversation requires us to respond to another person as the interaction unfolds. We can’t entirely predict what they’ll say or how they’ll react.
And that means accepting a degree of uncertainty.
Awkward silences aren’t necessarily a problem
Silence in conversation can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.
A few seconds pass and we may immediately feel responsible for filling the gap. Did I say something wrong? Have they run out of things to say? Is this awkward?
But silence isn’t necessarily evidence that a conversation has gone badly.
Sometimes people are thinking.
Sometimes they’re trying to find the words for something difficult.
Sometimes a pause gives someone the space they need to say what comes next.
When our conversations become faster and more fragmented, it can be easy to forget that listening isn’t simply waiting for our turn to speak.
Allowing another person time to think can itself be part of listening.
Conversation makes us vulnerable
There’s another reason real conversation can feel harder than sending a message.
We’re exposed.
The other person can see our expression, hear the uncertainty in our voice and respond immediately. We may say something badly and have to clarify it. We may discover that someone disagrees with us.
Turkle argues that these less controllable elements of conversation matter.
When we stay with an interaction after a misunderstanding, ask what somebody meant, explain ourselves differently or acknowledge that we’ve got something wrong, we’re doing something that isn’t possible if our goal is simply to present the perfect version of ourselves.
We’re learning how to navigate another human being.
And other human beings are complicated.
Being heard involves more than hearing words
Think about a conversation in which you felt genuinely listened to.
Chances are, it wasn’t only the words the other person used that mattered.
Perhaps they noticed that you hesitated. Maybe they didn’t immediately jump in with advice. They might have asked a question because your expression didn’t quite match what you were saying.
Face-to-face conversation contains information beyond words: tone of voice, facial expression, pauses, gestures and changes in emotion.
None of this means meaningful communication can’t happen through text or online. Of course it can.
The point is that different forms of communication give us access to different information.
And when something matters, sometimes the richness — and messiness — of conversation is exactly what we need.
We don’t need to get every conversation right
There can be pressure to communicate perfectly.
To use exactly the right language. To respond in exactly the right way. To know immediately what somebody needs from us.
But perhaps good conversation isn’t about perfection.
It might be about curiosity.
“Did I understand you correctly?”
“I’m not sure I explained that very well. Can I try again?”
“What did you mean when you said that?”
Those aren’t failures of communication. They’re part of communication.
A misunderstanding followed by genuine curiosity can sometimes take us somewhere that a perfectly polished exchange never would.
Making a little more room for messiness
None of this requires abandoning our phones or turning every interaction into a deep conversation.
Technology gives us extraordinary ways to stay connected, particularly with people we can’t physically be with.
But Reclaiming Conversation offers a useful invitation to notice when convenience and control might be replacing something we still need.
The conversation where neither person knows quite what to say.
The pause we resist filling.
The difficult subject we’d rather put into a message.
The moment we realise we’ve misunderstood someone and choose to stay curious rather than withdraw.
Perhaps we don’t need to become better at avoiding those moments.
Perhaps we need to become a little more comfortable having them.
Because real conversation was never supposed to be perfectly edited.
It was supposed to involve another person.
If you’re finding communication, relationships or expressing your feelings difficult, talking things through with a psychologist can help. Get in touch with our team here or contact us below.