The Cost of Staying Quiet When You Need to Speak Up
When you need to speak up, the cost of staying quiet is greater than the risk of getting hurt. Here are five reasons why this is true. — There is a woman I think about often. She had been seeing someone for four months. She wanted to know where things were headed, whether he was still dating other people, and whether he saw a future with her. Every time she thought about bringing it up, she found a reason to wait. He was in a good mood, and she didn’t want to change that. Or he seemed stressed about work, so the timing felt off. Or things were going so well that she convinced herself she didn’t need to ask at all. Four months into the relationship, she found out he had been seeing someone else the entire time. The conversation she kept postponing had cost her four months of emotional investment and the chance to make a clear-eyed decision about her own life. I hear versions of her story every single week. The details change, but the pattern is the ...