Removing silences, but with padding?

Hi, I'm aware of how to mark and/or remove silences in general, but I'm curious if there's a way to leave a little bit of that silence?  When I remove the silence, it cuts the voice lines together too tightly and makes things sound unnatural.  What I'd like to do is be able to specify a bit of time that doesn't get trimmed out of the silent segments.  Is this possible?  It'd be very helpful.