Self-criticism, self-silencing and loneliness in relationships

What self-silencing includes

In the authors’ account, self-silencing concerns expression restricted in an effort to preserve a relationship. A person may conceal disagreement, leave distress unspoken, or present an agreeable version of themselves while feeling differently in private. The relationship remains important. What becomes harder to see is the person’s own experience within it.

The researchers used the Silencing the Self Scale developed by Dana Crowley Jack and Diana Dill. As they explained it, the measure covers more than keeping quiet. It includes judging ourselves through other people's expectations, treating care as self-sacrifice, suppressing expression and maintaining a division between what we show and what we feel. These dimensions describe beliefs about what closeness requires, alongside the expression those beliefs may restrict.

A quiet conversation tells us little on its own. Someone may be listening, considering what they think, or choosing when to raise a concern. Those choices differ from believing that maintaining a relationship requires leaving one’s own experience out of it.

For example, choosing to help someone despite an inconvenience can express something we value. Believing that our inconvenience must never be acknowledged introduces a different condition. The distinction concerns whether caring for someone also allows the person offering care to acknowledge their own experience.

The study used the scale's overall score. Its findings therefore concern this broader pattern. They do not establish which of its four dimensions contributed most to loneliness, or suggest that every instance of compromise has the same meaning.

Self-criticism and the terms of closeness

The authors distinguished two ways of relating to ourselves and others. Self-criticism involved harsh self-evaluation, demanding standards and difficulty taking satisfaction in what one had accomplished. Dependency involved a strong concern with closeness and other people's availability, including fears of abandonment. These were questionnaire dimensions that varied across participants, rather than diagnoses assigned to them.

Both were associated with self-silencing. People reporting greater self-criticism tended to report more self-silencing, as did people reporting greater dependency. Each association remained when the researchers took the other dimension and depressive symptoms into account. The pattern appeared in both relationship groups.

Concern about losing someone's presence can accompany self-silencing. So can a demanding view of oneself. The authors proposed that someone who evaluates themselves harshly may be especially concerned about how they appear to others and may suppress expression in an effort to maintain the relationship. Their data supported the association, while that account of the person's purpose remained an interpretation.

Alongside a person’s wish for closeness, there may be a standard they believe they must meet to participate in it. A concern or disagreement may be evaluated as a personal failing before it ever becomes something another person can hear. Wanting a different plan and judging oneself for wanting it are separate experiences. Seeing that distinction allows the preference itself to become something that could be discussed.

Dependency had a different relationship with loneliness

Self-criticism was consistently associated with greater loneliness in this study. Dependency had a weaker and less consistent relationship with it. Among participants with a romantic partner, dependency had only a small association with loneliness in the initial analysis. Among those without a partner, the association was not statistically significant.

When the researchers considered dependency alongside self-criticism and depressive symptoms, dependency showed no statistically significant independent association with loneliness in either group. Self-criticism did. The result was therefore more specific than an account in which every concern about relationships accompanied the same degree of loneliness.

The authors also recognized a complication in the way dependency was measured. Their questionnaire did not separately assess a desire for connectedness and a more anxious or demanding need for reassurance. They considered whether distinguishing these aspects might produce a different result. They also proposed that some people concerned with closeness might actively seek company and support. These were possible explanations for further research, rather than findings established by this study.

Wanting someone nearby, fearing their absence, judging ourselves harshly and feeling lonely are distinct experiences. In these students, dependency was related to self-silencing without showing the same independent relationship with loneliness that self-criticism did. Understanding the pattern requires keeping those differences visible.

How self-silencing fitted the link with loneliness

The central analysis asked whether self-silencing could help account for the association between self-criticism and loneliness. The researchers tested a statistical model in which self-criticism was related to self-silencing, which was in turn related to loneliness. They included depressive symptoms so they could examine whether the pattern extended beyond the distress shared by these measures.

Among students in romantic relationships, the direct association between self-criticism and loneliness became smaller and was no longer statistically significant once self-silencing was included. The authors described self-silencing as an almost complete statistical mediator. Including what participants reported about holding back accounted for much of the overlap between self-criticism and loneliness in this group.

Among students without a romantic partner, self-silencing accounted for part of the association. A direct relationship between self-criticism and loneliness remained. The same proposed link appeared in both groups, with different amounts of the association remaining. The analyses did not establish whether the difference between the groups was itself statistically significant.

These questionnaires captured the students' experiences at one point in time. They supported a plausible account of how the experiences might be related, but did not establish a sequence in which self-criticism caused self-silencing and then loneliness. Loneliness might also influence what someone felt able to say, and relationship circumstances might influence both. Following people over time would help distinguish these explanations.

Its contribution is to bring the expression of our experience into the account. Harsh self-evaluation and loneliness were related, and what people reported about concealing themselves helped explain that relationship statistically. This gives the inquiry something more specific to examine than a person's general assessment of their worth or the mere presence of a partner.

Being known within the relationships we have

In its preliminary comparisons accounting for age, the study found no statistically significant overall difference in loneliness or self-silencing between participants with and without a romantic partner. Within each group, however, greater self-silencing was associated with greater loneliness. Relationship status and the patterns within each group answered different questions.

The absence of a significant group difference does not establish that partnered and unpartnered lives are equivalent. The more informative pattern here concerned variation within each group. Knowing whether someone had a partner left much of their experience undescribed.

Self-silencing was also associated with loneliness among both men and women. Although the concept developed through work focused on women's experiences, this study found a pattern relevant to both. Some findings about dependency differed, including higher dependency scores among partnered women than partnered men.

The paper also leaves room for the relationship itself to be examined more closely. It did not include a measure of how well a particular partnership was functioning or observations of what happened when someone tried to speak. Its loneliness questionnaire was broader than feeling lonely with a current partner. We therefore cannot use these results to judge a particular relationship, or to locate responsibility for loneliness in one person's way of thinking.

The researchers called for further work within ongoing relationships, where people’s responses to one another could be examined. That direction connects the wish to keep a relationship with the experience of being known within it. A preference or concern gives another person something specific to understand, and their response becomes part of the experience of expressing it.

Agreement is one possible response. So is a question, a different preference, or an effort to find an arrangement that includes both people. Being able to say what matters and discovering how it is received are distinct parts of an exchange. The relationship becomes visible in both.