Uncertainty, the mind’s demand for certainty, and the quiet poison we release in love
By: Roshan Jayasinghe
There is a space between two people that can’t be photographed.
A message is seen but not answered.
A tone changes.
A day passes without warmth.
A plan is left floating.
A look feels different, but nothing is said.
Nothing has “happened” in the visible world, yet inside the body, everything is happening.
This is where the human mind becomes restless. It starts gathering evidence. It fills silence with meaning. It forecasts endings. It rehearses pain. It builds a story so it can feel prepared.
And this is how relationships often get damaged, not by what is known, but by how we behave when we do not know.
The mind’s addiction to certainty
The mind is not always searching for truth.
Often, it is searching for relief.
Truth takes time. Truth unfolds. Truth requires humility.
Relief wants an answer now, even if the answer is wrong.
So the mind turns uncertainty into danger.
When we do not know what someone feels, we decide what they feel.
When we do not know where something is going, we conclude it is going nowhere.
When we cannot read the moment, we label the moment.
It looks like “protecting myself.”
But many times, it is simply discomfort dressed up as wisdom.
There’s an old song by The Hollies that many of us have carried in our chest for years. It doesn’t argue. It doesn’t explain. It simply confesses a kind of love that feels absolute, almost innocent in its simplicity.
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”
And maybe that is where we quietly go wrong in love. Not in the beauty of devotion, but in the way a nervous system can turn devotion into dependency and then call it romance.
When someone becomes the air, uncertainty feels like suffocation. Silence feels like threat. A pause feels like abandonment. And the mind, desperate to breathe, will do anything to force certainty. Even if that certainty poisons the bond.
The quiet ways we release poison into a bond
Most people do not destroy love with cruelty.
They destroy it with fear, disguised as logic.
They start testing.
Withholding.
Proving a point.
Tracking tone.
Making the other wrong to feel safe.
Demanding certainty as proof of love.
This is the subtle poison.
Not poison poured into a person, but poison released into the bond itself.
Because once your nervous system believes the worst, you stop relating to the person in front of you. You relate to your conclusion about them.
And a person can feel that immediately.
Fear is not observation. Fear is a verdict.
There is a difference between seeing clearly and reacting quickly.
Clear seeing is quiet.
It watches without rushing to name.
It stays present long enough for reality to show itself.
Fear is loud.
Fear assigns motives.
Fear collapses a human being into a fixed identity.
He is selfish.
She is cold.
They are playing games.
This is unsafe.
Sometimes these labels appear accurate. But the deeper problem is not the label. The deeper problem is what happens once the label is applied.
Once we name someone through fear, we behave as if only one truth exists. We stop meeting the living, changing human. We meet the role we assigned.
And then we call that “intuition.”
Neutral is not failure
Life has neutral gears.
There are moments where nothing is confirmed yet.
Where the wheel hasn’t declared its direction.
Where the future is not revealed.
Most people cannot tolerate neutral. They call it a problem. They rush to force motion. They pressure themselves. They pressure the other. They demand clarity before clarity has naturally arrived.
But neutral is not a collapse.
Neutral is not rejection.
Neutral is not proof that love is dying.
Neutral is often the honest state of what has not yet unfolded.
If you can learn to sit in neutral without panicking, you become a different kind of human in love.
A steadier one.
A truer one.
A safer one.
The mature move in uncertainty
Maturity is not pretending you do not feel.
Maturity is feeling fully, without letting fear drive the steering wheel.
It is the ability to say:
“I notice I’m anxious. I notice I’m filling in blanks. I notice my mind is rushing to an ending.”
And then to choose integrity instead of impulse.
To speak truth without turning it into an ultimatum.
To ask for clarity without demanding it as proof of love.
To stay respectful even when you are scared.
To remain clean even when the outcome is unclear.
This is emotional adulthood.
Not control. Not performance. Not fear-management.
A quiet steadiness that does not need the future to be guaranteed in order to behave with dignity in the present.
The unopened space is where love is tested
Most relationships are not tested in certainty.
They are tested in the unopened space.
In the pause.
In the silence.
In the moment where nothing is confirmed yet.
The question is not whether that space will come. It always comes.
The question is who you become inside it.
Do you release poison through suspicion, tests, and self protection?
Or do you remain steady, present, and truthful, letting reality reveal itself in its own time?
Because love does not only live in romance.
Love lives in how we behave when we do not know.
And the more you can stay whole in the unopened space, the less you will damage what might have become beautiful.
Author’s Note
This piece is not an argument against discernment. It is an invitation to notice the difference between clear seeing and fear-based certainty. We do not need to abandon wisdom. We need to abandon the compulsion to force an outcome simply to calm the nervous system.
Life unfolds. Relationship unfolds. When we stop trying to collapse the future, we give the present a chance to be real.
About the Author
Roshan Jayasinghe is a writer and observer of human systems. His work explores the gap between man made constructs and lived humanity, with a focus on how economics, trade and everyday choices intersect with questions of fairness, responsibility and inner alignment. Through essays for publications in The Morning Telegraph, he aims to remind readers that they are not passengers in a fixed machine, but active custodians of a shared world.
