Whether you call it an Irish goodbye, French leave or filer à l'anglaise (leave in the English style), as the French prefer, the act of quietly slipping out of a party without fanfare is a familiar social impulse. The Brazilians called it sair à francesa (French style), the Germans a Polnischer Abgang (Polish departure), and Australians call it ninja bombing. Whatever name it goes by, the concept is the same: one moment you’re there, the next you’ve vanished into the night without a drawn-out round of explanations, hugs and promises to catch up soon.

The pattern is telling: every culture has a term for it, and every culture blames someone else. That collective deflection suggests we already know, on some level, that slipping out unannounced is a social transgression.

But for those of us with anxiety, that silent exit isn’t rudeness. While etiquette traditionalists will probably insist that leaving without saying goodbye is a social no-no, some psychologists argue that it’s a coping strategy. Here’s why sneaking out without saying goodbye might be the healthiest decision you make all evening.

When you break it down – and let’s be honest, those of us who are anxious, introverted, neurodivergent or dealing with chronic illness have all broken this down into agonising detailed steps – saying goodbye is a loaded cultural ritual. It’s a performance that demands a high degree of social skill, accuracy and nuance.

Goodbyes are high-demand situations and, sadly, by the end of a social occasion, many of us are already depleted and don’t have the energy to handle all the steps involved.

For many of us, socialising can mean feeling overwhelmed, constantly monitoring how we come across, trying to fit into other people’s expectations, comparing ourselves to others and worrying about rejection. It can be exhausting to feel like you’re constantly trying to act like your best version of normal.

When socialising means constantly adapting yourself to other people’s expectations, the healthy choice becomes using your last bit of energy to recharge and take care of yourself. Don’t leave the party completely drained with nothing left to recover with.

Sometimes we want to leave quietly because leaving loudly feels like shouting out: “I matter! Look at me, I’m leaving!” The fact is, many of us sit with the belief that we don’t really matter that much, so we don’t say goodbye because we don’t feel we are worth the performance.

Sometimes a silent exit is about self-respect, minding your energy reserves, even if you really enjoyed the evening. At other times, though, it’s an act of self-erasure. You leave without saying goodbye because you think no one will care, that you don’t matter enough to make a fuss when leaving.

Leaving quietly can become a way to protect yourself from the discomfort of saying goodbye. But the quiet exit cuts both ways. Ask yourself whether leaving without a word made your life bigger – you conserved enough energy to recover and you’re glad to go back next time – or whether it shrank it, adding another reason to avoid socialising altogether.

If you are going to pick apart your goodbye and negatively assess it, the next goodbye will feel even harder. Be careful to reality-test your post-event ruminations. It’s usually not as bad as you think, especially if you are assessing your performance through the distorting lens of anxiety.

The healthiest choice of all

There is always a tension between wanting to belong and wanting to be yourself. If saying goodbye starts to feel so pressured and so performed that you lose any sense of being authentic, then the connection is starting to cost more than it’s worth.

If you feel like you need to be a chameleon to survive the complexities of socialising, the healthiest choice is to find a way to be who you really are. Find a way to tell your friends and family that leaving quietly is something you need because of how your nervous system and psychology are made, and not a reflection of the relationship. Research shows that being your truest self and having the best social connections go hand in hand.

And if you are neurodivergent, being open about what you need can feel like a risk, but it can also be a way to find acceptance, support and understanding when you let people know what you need and like.

If you’re anxious, it’s worth letting your host know in advance that you might need to slip away quietly. Otherwise, there’s a risk that people will read it the wrong way, as coldness or indifference, say.

Get ahead of it by letting people know you’ll leave without saying goodbye, and that you’re grateful to have been invited. Anxious people aren’t bad at relationships. Relationships just work better when everyone understands the other person’s needs.

Less is more

There’s a growing idea that being choosy about your social life isn’t antisocial – some psychologists call it “selective sociality”. Picking your moments carefully means you have more to give when it counts. The goal isn’t to retreat, but to invest in deeper relationships and in real presence, rather than the hollow churn of online contact – unless it supports meaningful connection.

In a world where being seen to do the right thing has begun to outweigh doing the right thing, selective sociality offers a way forward. Knowing our limits and being open about them, when possible, doesn’t weaken connection – it helps create relationships that feel real and sustainable.

If sneaking out without a fuss makes it more likely you will go to the next party, then it’s a choice for more social connection and therefore your health.

Trudy Meehan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

US President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing this week may ease tensions at the margins of the US–China rivalry. But it will not change a central fact: neither side can escape the rivalry, and neither side can decisively win it.

The biggest challenge for Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping is whether they can compete without turning the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship into its most dangerous one. A war is not inevitable.

If Washington and Beijing want to keep their competition peaceful, they must try to accomplish a few basic things:

• preserve military deterrence without turning it into provocation

• channel their rivalry into institutions and public goods, such as infrastructure development, rather than a military confrontation

• keep ideology from hardening every disagreement into a zero-sum struggle.

So, how can this be done?

1. Establish mutual restraint

Both countries will continue to build military capabilities and balance against each other. The danger comes when each side convinces itself that its actions are intended to deter hostilities, while the other interprets them as a provocation.

Nowhere is that danger greater than the impasse over Taiwan. For Beijing, Taiwan is a core sovereignty issue and a test of national resolve. For Washington, it is tied to US credibility as a security guarantor in the Indo-Pacific, regional stability, and its ability to deter coercive unification.

Both sides claim to be defending the status quo. Both believe the other is eroding it. And both are acting in ways that may be making the situation less stable.

The answer is not a unilateral concession by one side or the other. Rather, both sides need to establish mutual restraint, backed by clearer political reassurance.

For instance, China could reduce the scale and frequency of coercive military actions around Taiwan, such as military aircraft sorties, naval patrols and drone operations near the island. And the US could avoid steps that blur the line between support for Taiwan and support for formal independence.

Trust may be absent. But trust is not a precondition for stability. Clarity and restraint are.

This requires a serious framework for deterrence management, including:

• sustained efforts to clarify red lines

• reducing misperceptions about each other’s intentions and resolve

• preventing competitive signalling from spiralling into a confrontation.

During the Cold War, Washington and Moscow eventually learned that an arms race without guardrails was too dangerous to sustain. Washington and Beijing have not yet reached that level of strategic maturity. They need to.

Read more: Trump-Xi summit will be no ‘Nixon in China’ moment – that they are talking is enough for now

2. Compete in safer arenas

Rivalries can be channelled into forms that are less dangerous than military conflict, and can sometimes even be productive.

That is already happening. The United States and China are competing through global institutions and alignments, from the Quad and AUKUS (on the US side) to the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (on China’s side).

Both are trying to shape the rules, memberships and agendas of the regional and global orders in ways that advance their own influence and constrain the other’s.

On the surface, this can look like just another front in a new cold war. But institutional competition can be one of the safer forms of rivalry.

Competition can force institutions to adapt rather than stagnate. It can encourage new forms of regional cooperation. It can also push rival powers to provide public goods – such as infrastructure, development financing, technological investments and climate initiatives – in order to win support from others.

In infrastructure financing, for instance, China has used the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to expand its reach globally. The US and its partners have responded with initiatives of their own.

The competition between the two has been beneficial – and it has expanded the options available to developing countries.

This is also why a rush toward broad economic decoupling would be such a mistake. Some restrictions in sensitive sectors may be unavoidable. But a sweeping effort to sever economic ties would remove one of the few remaining guardrails in the relationship.

As long as the United States and China remain economically intertwined, both sides are incentivised to maintain stability and avoid conflict.

3. Lower the temperature

The US and China are not simply clashing over interests. They also have very different political and historical narratives.

US policymakers often cast the rivalry as a defence of the liberal order against authoritarian revisionism. Chinese leaders often see it as a struggle against containment, humiliation and foreign interference.

These are not just different rhetorical narratives. They shape what each side sees as threatening, acceptable or beyond compromise. They also help explain why the relationship has become so emotionally and politically charged.

Ideological competition is safest when it remains indirect. Neither Washington nor Beijing is likely to convert the other to its way of thinking. And neither is likely to persuade the wider world through their lectures on ideology.

The sounder strategy is to compete by example.

For the United States, it means showing that democratic governance can still deliver competence, cohesion and long-term economic vitality. For China, it means showing that its model can bring growth, social stability and international cooperation.

Both sides also need to recognise that ideological overreach is dangerous. The more Washington frames competition as a global struggle between democracy and autocracy, the more it encourages Beijing to see compromise as capitulation.

And the more Beijing wraps its foreign policy in narratives of anti-hegemony, the more likely Washington is to see its own restraint as weakness.

Engagement still matters for the same reason. If the United States and China stop talking, this ideological competition will harden and become more dangerous.

The greatest danger in the US–China competition is that both sides will come to see restraint as weakness, compromise as surrender and coexistence as impossible. Once that happens, catastrophe becomes far more likely.

The most realistic goal is not friendship, or even reconciliation. It is something harder and more modest: competition without war.

Kai He receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Toda Peace Institute, an independent institute in Japan promoting policy-oriented peace research. He serves as a non-resident senior research fellow at the Toda Peace Institute.

Huiyun Feng receives funding from Australia Research Council.