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I'll never forget the first time I heard my now-husband talking to himself in the bathroom.
We were only dating at the time, and I was convinced there was something wrong with this guy. Fast forward 10 years of marriage, two kids, and several moves, and I've learned to accept this quirk.
But it was only recently we discussed it. "Do you remember when you used to talk to yourself, like all the time?" I teased him over our morning coffee. He looked perplexed. "Oh, you mean how I just vocalize my inner monologue? Yeah, my mom does that, too. It's totally normal."
I was floored. Up until that moment, I never knew that some people have a running stream of thoughts being narrated in their head at any given time, most notably, my husband and likely some of my in-laws. Meanwhile, the inside of my head is blissfully quiet.
Research estimates that between 30 to 50% of people have an internal monologue, though the number of those who report no internal monologue was much lower, somewhere between five to 10%. In short, I'm the weird one.
"Roughly 25% to a third of people engage in inner speaking," said Russell Hurlburt, Ph.D. and professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
"An inner monologue is when you talk to yourself, and it's like talking in external speech, one word after another, usually in your own voice," Hurlburt said.
However, these statistics aren't foolproof since nearly all data related to internal monologues is self-reported.
Hurlburt spearheaded his own research into the topic and found that humans experience a range of inner phenomena, including inner speech, inner seeing, feelings, unsymbolized thinking, and sensory awareness.
My husband largely experiences inner speech, which is basically a running dialogue through his head of thoughts, to-dos, and even practicing big presentations at work.
Occasionally, his internal dialogue will make its way out, which means I'll hear him talking to himself while he's working, doing chores around the house, or even in the bathroom. At first, I thought it was really weird. Now I know that it's fairly common to have an inner dialogue.
My head is blessedly quiet. I definitely run through difficult situations or conversions at times, but it's never a running dialogue of speech like my husband experiences.
My friends were shocked that I didn't have an inner dialogue.
"Oh! You're one of those people? You're so lucky. My inner voice is constantly talking and arguing and screaming and distracting me all daylong," one said. Another one added that the conversations in her head distract her from actual conversations in real life.
According to Hurlburt's research, I'm not the only one who doesn't experience an inner monologue.
"There are a lot of people who don't have inner monologues," Hurlburt says. "It's like saying, some people don't play tennis; those are all skills that you acquire for whatever reason partially due to genetics, partially due to experience."
So, while my husband works out his inner monologue both internally and externally, I'll continue to enjoy the blissful quiet in my head. I guess the saying that opposites attract is correct in our case. And I've gotten used to the chatter in the bathroom, too.
