Strong, Silent Man Drives Woman Crazier

Even more so than she was in the first place.

Carol Burt
6 min readMay 18, 2022
Photo by Jens Lindner on Unsplash

My husband frequently makes me angry with his silences and lack of communication. I don’t know how a yappy wordsmith like me ended up with a man who is so taciturn he often won’t talk even when there is a need.

His mouth stays shut. I try to read his mind, mostly, a habit the therapist said is not good for me. I know she’s right but she doesn’t know just how silent he is. I’m not even sure the good-looking ole duffer would yell fire if the house was burning. But he’d probably save me.

I can coax him into talking. I learned to do so many years ago. But it is so time-consuming and so irritating that I seldom try anymore. I’ve told him that his silences are bad for him as well as for our relationship. My patience wears mighty thin playing 20 questions every day and being the sole soundtrack for most of our time.

This is a dude, who when he was just a teenager, cut his hand very badly one day just as his mother was loading he and his brother up to go to the grocery store. He dutifully got in the back seat. Saying nothing as usual. But his twin brother, never a quiet guy, started yelling that he was getting blood all over the place.

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Carol Burt

Former print journalist, former mayor, retired law enforcement officer. Writing about politics and government along with random personal essays.