"They Already Know"

When did you last tell someone you loved them?

Not the automatic "love you" tossed over your shoulder on the way out the door. Not the reflexive response to their "I love you" first. I mean: when did you last look at someone who matters to you and say, deliberately, without prompting, with full presence: I love you, and here is why, and I want you to know it?

If you're like most people, you can't remember. Or the memory is months old, maybe years.

And if I asked why—why the important words go unspoken—you'd probably say some version of: "They already know."

It's the third great lie of deferral. Not "there's always tomorrow." Not "I'm not ready." But: "They already know how I feel, so I don't need to say it."

It sounds reasonable. It isn't. It's a theft—of connection, of memory, of the words that might be the last words, though we never know which words those will be.

We assume the people we love know they're loved.

It's obvious, isn't it? We show up. We provide. We stay. We do the thousand small things that demonstrate care—the errands run, the meals cooked, the bills paid, the presence maintained. Surely they can see it. Surely the evidence speaks for itself.

But here's what we forget: people can't read minds. People don't automatically know what we feel unless we tell them. People—even the people closest to us—carry their own doubts, their own insecurities, their own silent questions about whether they matter.

Your partner, after twenty years of marriage, may still wonder if you'd choose them again. Your parent, after a lifetime of providing, may still wonder if they did enough. Your friend, after decades of loyalty, may still wonder if they're truly valued or merely convenient.

They don't already know. They hope. They assume. They tell themselves stories based on incomplete evidence. But they don't know—not until you tell them.

We waste time on entertainment that numbs us, on arguments that don't matter, on scrolling through strangers' lives while ignoring the people in our own. But the most wasted time of all might be the moments we could have spoken and didn't—the I love you that stayed silent, the I'm proud of you that remained unvoiced, the You changed my life that died in our throats.

I know a man who spent thirty years working alongside his father.

They built a business together. Showed up every day to the same office. Shared meals, shared problems, shared the weight of responsibility. They talked constantly—about work, about logistics, about the news, about nothing.

They never talked about what mattered.

The son never said: "Dad, I admire you. I learned everything from watching you. You made me who I am." He assumed his father knew.

The father never said: "Son, I'm proud of you. You exceeded every hope I had. You became more than I could have imagined." He assumed his son knew.

The father died on a Tuesday afternoon. A heart attack, no warning, no time for final words. The son stood at the funeral and realized, with terrible clarity, that neither of them had ever said what both of them felt.

"They already know" had stolen everything.

Marcus advises focus on our own actions, not others' opinions. But the corollary is: if your own action should be speaking truth to someone who needs to hear it, speak. Don't wait to see if they already know. Don't assume your feelings are obvious. Act—and acting, sometimes, means simply opening your mouth.

Why don't we say the words?

"They already know" is the excuse. But underneath the excuse is something else: fear.

Fear of vulnerability. To say "I love you" is to expose yourself. To admit dependence. To acknowledge that someone has power over your happiness. It's safer to show love through action than to speak it—action can be denied, reinterpreted, kept ambiguous. Words are naked.

Fear of rejection. What if you say it and they don't respond in kind? What if your declaration is met with awkwardness, with silence, with less than you hoped? The words unspoken can't be rejected. The words spoken can break your heart.

Fear of change. To speak the deep truth is to change the relationship. Once said, words can't be unsaid. The dynamic shifts. Something new becomes possible—or something old becomes impossible. Silence preserves the status quo.

And underneath all of these: fear of mortality. To tell someone what they mean to you is to admit that time together is finite. That one of you will leave first. That the words might be needed because silence might become permanent.

To speak love when society says to stay cool. To express admiration when culture says to stay detached. To be vulnerable when everyone else is guarded—yes, you might look foolish. You might feel stupid. You might expose something soft in a world that rewards hardness.

But the alternative is silence. And silence, on a long enough timeline, becomes permanent.

Those who work with the dying report a consistent pattern.

When the end is near—when denial becomes impossible and time becomes visible—people don't talk about their careers. They don't talk about their possessions. They don't talk about the achievements that consumed their days.

They talk about the people they loved. And their greatest anguish is often the same: I never told them. I assumed they knew. Now it's too late.

The son who never said "I forgive you" to his father. The mother who never said "I'm proud of you" to her daughter. The friend who never said "You saved my life when I was drowning." The spouse who never said "Choosing you was the best decision I ever made."

They assumed. They waited. They thought there would be time. And now they're lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by machines, watching the clock run out, and the words they should have spoken are burning in their chests with nowhere to go.

What you do. What you say. What you think. Marcus links all three—action, speech, and mind—to the reality of mortality. And speech, in some ways, is the most urgent. Actions accumulate over time. Thoughts can be revised. But the words left unspoken can become permanently unspeakable.

You could leave life right now. So could they. The conversation you're postponing might never happen. The words dying in your throat might stay there forever.

In Pride and Prejudice, Darcy writes Elizabeth a letter.

He has been rejected. His first proposal was a disaster—arrogant, condescending, certain of acceptance. She refused him with words that cut: "You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it."

Most men, wounded like that, would retreat into silence. They would assume she knew his feelings and chose to reject them. They would protect what remained of their pride by never speaking of it again.

Darcy writes the letter.

"Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid only of standing still."

— Chinese Proverb

The letter is not a second proposal. It's an explanation. A clarification. A speaking of truths that he could have left unspoken. He addresses her accusations one by one. He reveals what he thought, why he acted as he did, what he feels.

The letter changes everything. Not because it persuades her to love him—not yet. But because it speaks what was hidden. It replaces assumption with knowledge. It gives Elizabeth information she needed to see him clearly.

Austen understood: the unspoken word is the enemy of connection. Only when Darcy stops assuming that his feelings are obvious—only when he has the courage to articulate what he thought she already knew—does the relationship become possible.

How do you break the habit of silence?

Start with the easy ones. The words that are true but not terrifying. Tell a friend why you value them. Tell a colleague what you've learned from them. Tell a family member one specific thing about them you admire. Build the muscle of speaking before you need it for the heavy lifts.

Write it first. If speaking feels impossible, write a letter. The act of putting words on paper clarifies what you mean and commits you to meaning it. You can deliver the letter, or you can read it aloud—but the writing itself breaks the silence.

Use the occasion. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays—these are socially acceptable moments to say meaningful things. Use them not for generic sentiment but for specific truth. Not "Happy birthday, I love you" but "Happy birthday. Here's what you've meant to my life this year, and why I'm grateful you exist."

Remember the deadline. Every conversation might be the last. Every goodbye might be final. You don't know which one it will be. So speak as if silence might become permanent—because, eventually, it will.

Each day as a separate life. Which means: each conversation might be the entire relationship. Each encounter might be the only one. If this were true—if today were all you had—what would you say to the people who matter?

Say it.

They don't already know. And you might not get another chance to tell them.

The man at his father's funeral stood at the podium and said what he wished he'd said when his father could hear it.

The words were beautiful. Specific. True. Everyone in the room wept, imagining the man who had earned such love.

Everyone except the father. He wasn't there to hear it. He never would be.

"They already know" had turned a lifetime of love into a eulogy. The words had finally been spoken—thirty years too late.

There's another lie, perhaps the most dangerous of all. The lie that says the past can be revised, the choices unmade, the roads untaken somehow taken after all.

We turn to that lie next—and to the liberation that comes from finally abandoning it.