There is a conversation i put off for almost two years. With someone close to me. About something that had been sitting between us quietly, unaddressed, changing the texture of the relationship without either of us naming what was happening.
I told myself the timing was never right. That it would upset things. That we were fine enough and fine enough was better than the risk of what an honest conversation might open up.
What i did not account for was what the avoidance was doing in the meantime. The thing you do not say does not disappear. It just changes form. Becomes distance. Becomes a slight guardedness that was not there before. Becomes two people navigating around something they have both noticed and both agreed without words to pretend is not there.
By the time i finally had the conversation i had been avoiding, the relationship had already paid a price for the silence. The conversation itself was hard and uncomfortable and did not resolve everything immediately. But it was less damaging than two more years of the alternative would have been.
I think fear of difficult conversations is almost always fear of the immediate discomfort of having them, not an accurate assessment of what happens after. The discomfort of the conversation is finite. It has a beginning and an end. The discomfort of permanent avoidance is indefinite. It just keeps accumulating quietly in the background with no resolution point.
The conversations that feel most dangerous to have are almost always the ones where something real is at stake. Which means they are also the conversations where something real can shift if you are willing to go through the discomfort of actually having them.
Most relationships that end badly end because something went unaddressed for too long. Not because people did not care enough. Because they cared but found the avoidance easier than the honesty, until the avoidance became its own kind of damage.
Say the thing. Not cruelly. Not as an ambush. But honestly, and sooner than feels comfortable.
The conversation you keep postponing is probably the one your relationship needs most right now.
https://vote.hive.uno/@thebbhproject
https://vote.hive.uno/@hivecuba
Support the witness and vote for TheBbhProject carried out by 
