Express Yourself

In any relationship, plenty goes unsaid. Maybe you don't tell your significant other that you're fed up because he always forgets to rinse the breakfast dishes. While this can smooth everyday life, it does have its downside--literally.

Fairhaven College psychologist Dana Jack, Ed.D., calls it silencing the self, and she contends it's so characteristic of women that it contributes to their high rate of depression. But when University of Houston psychologists investigated why people keep thoughts bottled up, it was men who reported more reticence.

For many men, keeping a lid on things is a calculated measure. According to Linda Vaden Gratch, Ph.D., men do it to maintain power in a relationship--when they don't talk, their partner is left guessing, For other guys, silence is less strategy than a shortcoming: they simply never picked up the vocabulary to express how they feel. When women keep things back, it's for a totally different reason. Many learn that to foster closeness, they must put their partner's needs first, reports Jack. So to protect his feelings, they hide their own. Petty annoyances remain unspoken.

Despite the sex differences, self-silencing has universally bad consequences. Says Gratch: "Men use it to create distance, women to be close. But everyone who is a high self-silencer feels depressed.