The car park again

Here's a scene from some months later. It's an example of how things might go, and I'm not promising it.

It's a Tuesday in February. Over the past few weeks Sam has started taking work calls during supper. It's happened four or five times now. You've noticed yourself getting quiet at the table, and last night in bed you caught yourself composing a speech about it, with Sam's part written for him.

You recognise the rehearsal for what it is. In the morning you write one sentence on the back of an envelope. "Sam's been taking work calls during supper and I'd like him to stop." You ask yourself the three questions. It's a pattern, nothing's about to change, and you're rehearsing. So it passes. You text him at lunchtime. "Nothing terrible, but there's something small I'd like to talk about. After the kids are down tonight?" He replies, "Course. Should I be worried?" You write back, "No. Five minutes."

At half past eight you sit down with him. Your heart's going a bit, which still surprises you. "Thanks. It's a small thing. The last few weeks you've taken work calls during supper, four or five times, and I find it spoils the one bit of the day we're all together. I'd like supper to be phones away unless it's a real emergency."

He begins to say that it's been a mad month and the calls were important. You say nothing and wait. Then he says, "No, you're right. I hadn't clocked how often. I'll tell them I'm not free between six and seven." He adds that he'd like you not to read the news on your phone at breakfast, if you're making rules, and you laugh and agree that's fair.

It takes seven minutes, and then you watch something together.

Compare it with the car park. It concerned one thing, a few weeks old. You raised it at a time you'd both chosen, in words you'd picked, and you made a request he could say yes to. He wasn't ambushed, so he didn't have to defend himself for long. You hadn't stored anything up. And because you raised yours, he felt able to raise his.

Saturdays, as it happens, got sorted out back in September, after a second and much better conversation that began with your apology for the first. He does alternate weeks now, and you have Sunday mornings. It turned out that he'd have agreed to that in April.

Things won't always be this tidy. Some conversations will go badly, and some people will say no. There'll be things you carry for longer than a week, because you're tired or frightened or it's Christmas. But you've learned that what you dread is mostly the first ten seconds, and that the first ten seconds can be written down in advance. The longer you leave the thing unsaid, the bigger it gets.

If you do one thing after closing this book, write the thing in one sentence, and send the person a message asking for half an hour this week.