"They did it on purpose"

The strongest readings have intent in them. The email wasn't merely about you. It was meant to land as it did. The two lines were chosen. The quiet at dinner was a message. They know what they're doing.

Most behaviour isn't planned. The two-line email was written in ninety seconds between meetings by a person who wrote eleven other two-line emails that afternoon. The quiet at dinner was a person too tired to talk. Intent is a story the reading adds, because a message that was meant is easier to be hurt by, and being hurt is what the reading is for.

Downey and Feldman's rejection-sensitive participants did exactly this. Shown behaviour that was deliberately ambiguous, they saw intentional rejection where others saw ambiguity. The word the researchers used was intentional. It wasn't that these people saw more coldness. It was that they saw purpose behind it. And in the new couples, the partner's ordinary insensitivities, the forgotten call, the distracted answer, were read as meant.

I'd offer a plain test for intent, which is effort. A planned message takes effort, and effort leaves marks. A person who wanted their email to sting would write more than two lines, because two lines can't be aimed. A person who wanted their silence to be a message would break it to make sure you'd got it. The absence of effort is the mark of the day behind it. Tiredness is short and quiet, and so is intent, and the way to tell them apart is that tiredness doesn't follow up.

If you need to know, the check settles it in a sentence, and it's the only thing that does. But I'd ask you to notice how often the reading supplies intent, and how rarely the world does. People are mostly not thinking about you. That's the hard part of this book, and it's also the relief.