If and when you don’t talk to the people in your life, you lose them! There is no trick to bringing people together like talking. Don’t wonder why you are alone, why your friends are far away, why your spouse is cold or your home is quiet, why your children are not responsive to your training, molding and guidance. Why your vision is not expanding, why your community is not growing when you are not talking to people around you. Whether at work, at home, in church, or anywhere. Talking is a relationship enabler and a binder.
Communication gaps give room for assumptions, assumptions are relationship killers.
People put work and money after people. They want to substitute relationships and contact with money. Let me share some of the things that are bound to happen when people do not communicate.
People Fall Apart When There's Silence: A study was conducted by Sulistyo Budi and Wicaksono in 2025. The study was about the effect of communication intensity on relationship satisfaction in long distance couples. They found something interesting. Communication accounted for roughly 32% of the variance in satisfaction levels demonstrating its powerful, tangible impact of communication.
Also Knapp’s Relational Development Model explains a progressive coming apart that eventually ends in termination when communication ceases. It explains the three stages of this coming apart as stagnation, avoidance and termination.
Vision Crumble When There's Silence: An older McKinsey report, showed that well-connected teams see a productivity increase of 20–25%. Similarly, a report titled The State of Business Communication in 2024 conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of Grammarly showed that 64% of the 253 business leaders surveyed believed that effective communication has increased their team’s productivity, and 55% of knowledge workers agreed.
Motivation Dries Up In Silence: Several journals points to a strong correlation between effective communication and motivation. The most important for me is how it reduces social loafing which is the tendency for an individual to be less participatory in a group compared to being a alone. Quite impressively, the Motivating Language theory by J sullivan provides clear explanation about how communication drives motivation in an organization through its three variants, offering direction, providing empathy and giving meaning which impacts autonomous, controlled motivation, and affective commitment.
Culture Deteriorates in Silence: According to Kahn, 1990, in his paper that attempts to provide the relationship between the organizational culture and the engagement of workers through a thorough examination of essential cultural factors, leadership styles, and management practices that create an engaged workforce says, the truth certainly is that the existence of poisonous or disordered cultures may bring about the indifferent position of a worker or the dissatisfaction of a worker that eventually results in job turnover rates. Furthermore, Kotter and Heskett (1992) assert that adaptive cultures, characterized by innovation and responsiveness, are more likely to sustain engagement over time.
Also, look around you, did you notice a concerning deterioration of moral and etiquette among young people that is masked by civilization? Lots of kids could not speak their local languages or understand why certain things are done and others are not. Its due to lack of the communication of essential values.
Stories get Distorted in Silence: You remember the several tale by moonlight stories you listened to as a young child. How many children in your generation listened to the same story and it felt similar across many generations. The value that these stories brings shows how communication preserves stories. Effective communication serves as a defence against loss of cultural memory and distortion of history. It preserves authentic voices and educates future custodians in a way that makes people know and own their stories.
These are other things that happen when you don’t talk to the people in your life:
Friends fall apart in silence: I used to have a friend when I was younger. I visited him often and he rarely visited me. It was a concern to my mum and she complained about the lack of reciprocity. I didn’t care. I continued to visit him until I stopped. It didn’t make sense that I spent my time to visit while he never visited. One of the biggest mistakes you can ever make is to assume that certain friends are built to reach out while you are not built for engaging in your relationship with your friends.
Communication have to go both ways in order to sustain the life of a relationship. Friends drift in silence.
Love Grow Cold in Silence: If you want to snuff life out of your love relationship, stop talking with your love pairs. Communication is the oxygen of a relationship. It’s the conveyor belt of trust, affection and needs.
Children Wander in Silence: I was invited to speak at a youth anniversary program in a church about seven years ago. The most important advice I gave to the parents present is to cultivate a healthy communication between them and their wards. This will make it easier for them to bond and share valuable relationships. How many of the wandering colleagues you had in secondary or tertiary institutions had a great relationship with their parents. Most of them could not wait to leave home for campus and do not share anything meaningful with the parents. Communication creates a safe place in any kind of relationship. It enhances influence.
Anxiety Mounts in silence: Communication allays fear and conveys facts that could dissuade anxiety. What you listen to, who speaks to you and who you converse with when you are in doubt matters. Not having someone to communicate with is a bigger problem than anxiety itself.
Faith Becomes Inactive in Silence: Verbal persuasion boosts confidence in beliefs. We can build faith through prayers and conversation. People draw strength when they hear other people’s testimonies, listen to sermon, group discussion etc. Faith comes by hearing*, active listening is part of communication. Faith grows in communication the way fire grows in oxygen.
Talk to the people that matters to you.
Have a great week and breakthrough from within.
*Romans 10:17
©Abiola Iyiola, 2025
This really hit home, especially the part about waiting for reciprocity.
What stands out to me is that while communication is indeed a two-way street, someone has to be willing to start the traffic moving. Not out of obligation, but out of genuine care for the relationship. The research you cited about communication accounting for 32% of relationship satisfaction drives this home, we can't substitute presence with anything else.
Thanks for the reminder that talking to the people who matter isn't just nice to do, it's essential.
Going to reach out to a few people I've been meaning to connect with.