"If I don't say anything, it means it's fine"

Now for the people around you, because so far this has been about your record, and they don't live in your record. They live in what you say.

You might hold, without ever having put it into words, a rule that silence is approval. You mention what's wrong. If you haven't mentioned something, it's because it was fine, and everyone knows that. Your partner knows you noticed the table, because you'd have said something if you hadn't. Your colleague knows the other forty pages were good, because you only raised the total.

I want to test that against what the other person actually receives. Your partner receives a remark about the pan. That's the whole transmission. There is no second message saying "and the table was noticed and approved of". You may feel that message, but a felt message doesn't cross the room. What crosses the room is the pan. Your colleague receives one sentence about page four. The forty pages produced silence, and silence isn't a message with content. It's the absence of one, and people fill absences with whatever they're already inclined to believe.

So what do they conclude? It depends on the person, and on how long they've lived with the commentary. Early on, they might give you the benefit of the doubt. Over months, most people settle on one of two readings. Either you didn't notice the fine, in which case what they do is invisible to you, or you noticed and didn't think it worth saying, in which case it's worth nothing. Neither reading is what you intend. Both are reasonable, given the evidence they've got, which is the fault list and nothing else.

This is the part that I think readers of this book find hardest, so I'll say it plainly. From where the other person stands, you are the sum of your remarks. They can't see your standards or your care or the silent approval. They can only hear what you say, and what you say is faults. To them, you're a person who notices faults. That's not a misreading. It's an accurate reading of the only data you've given them.

The "you're welcome for the table" your partner said to nobody was that reading, spoken aloud. It wasn't a sulk. It was a report on what it's like to have cleared a table for someone whose only remark was the pan. And the thing to notice is that it came as a surprise to you, because in your version of the evening the table had been seen. It hadn't. Not in any way that reached them.