Is There Intimacy In Never Speaking Again?

I think that there is a strange kind of intimacy in never speaking again.

To know someone once so well, to carry their laughter in your chest and their voice stitched into your memory — and then to walk away, letting silence become the only thing left between you. It feels final, yes, but not empty. Silence has texture. It holds everything that words might have spilled, and then keeps it safe, sealed.

In Tale No. 10 of the Heptaméron by Marguerite de Navarre, a handsome knight, in love with a princess, is too overwhelmed by his feelings to confess them. In a quote now popularised by one of my favourite films, Call Me By Your Name, he asks: "Is it better to speak or to die?"

The question explores the difficult choice I think we've all faced at least once in love and in life. To have to choose between revealing one's true feelings and risk rejection and humiliation, or suppressing these emotions, which in itself can feel like a form of living death. It prompts reflection on the courage required for vulnerability, versus what's seen as the safer path of silence and regret.

As brave as vulnerability may be, I would argue that sometimes the biggest form of courage is the courage to never reach out again. And in some cases, that is where the deepest intimacies lay.

We often think intimacy belongs to presence — the closeness of conversations, the sharing of secrets, the late-night phone calls. But there’s another intimacy, quieter and more haunting: the kind that comes when you decide the last thing ever said is the last thing that will ever be said. When you let the final words sit unchallenged, unedited, unreturned.

There’s tenderness in that restraint. To stop speaking is to allow the story to remain exactly as it is, untouched by explanations or revisions. It means trusting that what has been said — or left unsaid — is enough to carry both people forward, separately.

Sometimes, the decision to never speak again is a form of self-love. To choose your peace, well-being, and sanity over the satisfaction of having landed that final mic-drop worthy line. Going "no contact" is currently one of the most popular ways in which netizens are healing from break-ups. It requires you to cut all direct contact with the person you no longer share a romantic relationship with. Friends and family members are getting involved to aid in this journey of self-protection. It helps you grow emotionally and gain perspective. It is by no means an easy feat to achieve, especially in the face of heartbreak.

Of course, it aches. There are nights when you rehearse conversations that will never happen, apologies that will never arrive, laughter that will never be shared again. But buried in that ache is a strange closeness: a recognition that your silence is not just absence, but a kind of enduring connection. You are linked, not by the words you keep exchanging, but by the agreement — spoken or not — that no more words will come.

And perhaps that’s what makes this intimacy so powerful: it is not about holding on, but about letting go. To never speak again is to choose the honesty of endings, to honour what was by refusing to dilute it with what could have been. Maybe that is its own kind of love. To step back into silence, together AND apart. To let the intimacy live not in what is said, but in the decision that nothing else needs to be.

Perhaps intimacy is not always in the speaking, but in the courage to leave words behind.