A shared silence is different from two people waiting for the other to rescue the moment.

There are two silences that look identical from outside. In one, nobody needs to speak, and the quiet is comfortable and shared. In the other, both people are waiting for the other to rescue the moment, and the same absence of sound is doing entirely different work. The difference is whether anyone is under pressure.

You can usually tell in your own body. If a silence has become a task, say something ordinary rather than something interesting, since the point is to release the pressure rather than to fill the gap well. And when a silence is genuinely easy, notice who you can have it with, because that list is short and worth knowing.