The Words We Cannot Say

Most people believe that our relationships should be measured by the extent to which we can speak with another person, the discussions that we can ultimately have with them.  By this measure, the discussions become an indicator to the extent to which we trust the person.

I wonder if instead most people have this backwards:  that our relationships should not be measured by the extent to the which we can speak with them, but rather by the words we cannot say to them.

In most relationships there are a series of areas that we simply cannot address.  There are subjects too sensitive, areas too painful, thoughts too revealing.  These are the words that we cannot speak, the words that if they are spoken usually create great anxiety and consternation.  

We come to instinctively know these words as we discover the bounds of our relationships.  We come to understand the areas beyond which we cannot go.  Sometimes these barriers are immediately apparent; sometimes these barriers are erected over time.  But they are still there, corralling the words we cannot speak from the exposure of that relationship.

Think for a minute:  how many times in a fit of anger or melancholy are we willing to reveal to a stranger the innermost secrets of our lives because we are frustrated?  How is it that we cannot do the same to people much closer to us?  Thus the words that cannot spoken become the measure of our true willingness to be honest, not our so-called willingness to be honest with merely anybody.

How do such words come to be?  I truly do not understand it fully myself.  I wish I did, because herein lies the great key to true relationships.  They start, I suppose, by accident or even intent, the sudden realization that something creates pain or that something is simply "off limits" for a conversation.  Once discovered, these areas become protected, like the scar tissue of an old wound, becoming noticeably different than the parts of the relationship around us by its distinctiveness and silence surrounding it.  Left alone, these become the obstacles of our relationships as we spend our time threading through them as we try to seek to relate to each other in a way that does not invoke them.

Is there a solution to this?  I hesitate to suggest one.  Certainly one can make the argument that one should seek to tear away at these barriers, to make true honesty a policy in every one of our relationships.  But this does not always work either and too often "true honesty" is simply a pretense for hurting others in the name of exculpating ourselves - the very thing that these inner barriers were created for.  Perhaps we could look at doing this - we should always look to deepen relationships instead of constricting them - but always with gentleness and keen eye to when we are beginning to cause pain.  Even the greatest scar will in time fade - but it certainly cannot be forced along.

So we take stock of our relationships not be what we can say but by what we cannot, would we find ourselves in the same position of feeling that we are surrounded by true relationships?  Or will we discover that we are entrenched in a maze of built up barriers carefully designed to move communication down narrow paths specifically designed to prevent discovering certain things?