The People We Cut Off

i thought staying quiet was how you kept people.

Somewhere along the way, we started treating every disappointment like a warning sign.

If someone hurts you, cut them off.

If they misunderstand you, stop explaining yourself.

If they don’t match your energy, leave.

We call it choosing ourselves.

And sometimes, it is.

But lately, I have been wondering how many relationships we have ended not because they were unhealthy, but because we never learned how to have a difficult conversation.

I started thinking about this after realizing something about myself.

I don’t know how to have conflict with someone I love.

I know how to apologize.

I know how to forgive.

I know how to wait until things feel normal again.

But I don’t always know how to look at someone I care about and say:

You hurt me.

Growing up, conflict was usually followed by silence.

If I did something wrong, I would be told what I had done.

Then came the silent treatment.

I knew that the only way to make things okay again was to say sorry.

Once I apologized, the silence would end.

And that was it.

There was no conversation about what happened.

No space for me to explain what I meant.

No chance to say that maybe I was hurt too.

For a long time, I thought that was what resolving conflict looked like.

Someone gets hurt.

Someone apologizes.

Then everyone moves on.

But now I wonder if we ever really moved on.

Or if we just stopped talking about it.

Maybe that is why, whenever someone hurts me, my first instinct is to convince myself that it doesn’t matter.

I tell myself to forgive.

To let it go.

To be the nice girl.

So I stay quiet.

But eventually, I share less.

I trust less.

I begin leaving the relationship without ever telling the other person why.

I thought I was protecting the relationship from conflict.

But maybe I was only protecting myself from the discomfort of honesty.

Recently, I found out that a few people in my life were upset with me.

They felt excluded from certain plans.

Instead of coming to me, they spoke about it with each other.

What hurt me was not that they wanted to be included.

I could understand that.

What hurt me was that no one asked me.

They had already decided what my intentions were without giving me the chance to explain.

I remember thinking that I would never do that to someone I love.

Because I have always believed that love is consideration.

It is giving someone an excuse before giving them a punishment.

It is asking a question before deciding what they meant.

But then I realized that I was doing my own version of the same thing.

I wanted them to tell me that they were hurt.

But I was avoiding telling them that they had hurt me too.

So I sent a message.

I said that what happened was not okay.

I said that if anyone was upset with me, I wanted them to come to me.

It was uncomfortable.

Because when you grow up believing that conflict leads to silence, honesty can feel like the beginning of an ending.

A little later, there was a gathering at one of their homes.

And I went.

I said hello.

I sat with everyone.

I let myself enjoy the evening.

Part of me thought that because I had spoken up, I now had to remain distant.

That being warm again would make it seem like what happened was acceptable.

But I didn’t want to punish them with my absence.

I had already said what I needed to say.

And I could still choose to be kind afterward.

That evening made me realize that I had been seeing conflict as a choice between two things.

Stay quiet and keep the relationship.

Or speak up and risk losing it.

But maybe there is a third choice.

Maybe I can speak because I want the relationship to survive.

Of course, not every relationship should.

Some relationships only continue when we keep abandoning ourselves.

Sometimes, leaving really is the healthiest thing we can do.

But not everyone who hurts us is trying to harm us.

Sometimes good people make bad decisions.

Sometimes they misunderstand us.

Sometimes they do not realize the weight of what they have done.

And sometimes we will be those people too.

When that happens, we will hope they ask us what we meant.

We will hope they remember all the ways we loved them before the moment we failed to.

There is a verse in Surah Fussilat that I keep thinking about whenever I reflect on this.

Allah says:

“Good and evil cannot be equal. Respond to evil with what is best, then the one you are in a feud with will be like a close friend.”

(Surah Fussilat 41:34)

I used to think responding with what is best meant staying quiet.

Forgiving without ever admitting that I was hurt.

But maybe responding with what is best is refusing to turn one hurt into another.

Choosing honesty over gossip.

Understanding over assumption.

A conversation over a punishment.

It is saying:

What you did hurt me.

But I am willing to hear your side.

I am still learning how to do that.

But I don’t want every disappointment to become a goodbye.

Maybe love is not never hurting each other.

Maybe it is remembering that one painful moment does not erase every good one that came before it.

Because some relationships are meant to end.

But maybe others only end because no one was willing to stay for the difficult conversation.