What handing over buys you

Go back to the envelope on the hall shelf. Every time the person in that example walks past it, two things could happen. They could open it, or they could think "this is his mess" and keep walking. The second brings a small, quick easing, because the dread about the number inside goes quiet for a while. That easing is what the habit pays, and it comes in several forms.

The first is innocence. If the next move is someone else's, then whatever happens now isn't down to you. This matters a great deal to anyone who was blamed a lot, as a child or in a marriage. For them "not my fault" is a place of safety, and they're slow to leave it.

The second is a rest from risk. Asking the manager why you were passed over might get you an answer you don't want. Ringing the friend might show that she isn't much bothered either way. While the move is theirs, you don't have to find out.

The third is sympathy. When you tell the story well, people are warm to you, and the warmth is real. For some of us it's the most dependable way we've found of getting any.

The fourth is the high ground. In the account of what happened, you're the one who behaved properly. That's often true, and it's pleasant to go over.

The fifth is an explanation. "My career stalled because of what they did" is simpler than the real mixture of causes, and kinder to you.

I'm not going to tell you these are imaginary. What I'd ask you to look at is what the relief is relief from. It's relief from the discomfort of having an uncertain move to make. Handing over ends that discomfort in a second or two. But the debt in the envelope is still there, and so is the unasked question at work. What you've bought is a gap before you next have to think about it, and meanwhile the debt or the question is usually getting harder to deal with.

Now the costs. I count five.

The waiting has no end date. The person you're waiting on often doesn't know they're being waited on. If they did know, they might not agree that they owe you anything. You could be waiting on someone who has forgotten the whole thing.

You've also put the person who treated you worst in charge of your timetable. I think this is the oddest feature of the habit. You wouldn't trust your ex to choose your curtains, but whether your finances get sorted out this year now depends on his conscience.

Moves go out of date. The conversation with your parents would have been awkward in the first year. After eight years of silence it's a much bigger thing to bring up. Job openings close, deadlines for complaints pass, and friendships cool beyond the point where one phone call would mend them.

The sympathy runs down. The first telling gets warmth. By the tenth, people change the subject, and you can see them doing it. That feels like one more wrong, and it gets added to the list.

The last cost is the one I'd worry about most. After enough practice, the question "what could I do about this?" stops coming up at all. You no longer notice moves even when they're in front of you. From inside, this doesn't feel like a habit. It feels as though life doesn't offer you any openings.

So how do you tell a fair grievance from the habit? You can't do it by checking whether the complaint is true, because it usually is. The test I'd suggest is one question. Is there something I could do about this that I'm not doing, because I think someone else ought to be the one to do it? If the answer is yes, the habit is at work, however right you are about the facts.

There's an objection here. Sometimes waiting is correct. You've put in a formal complaint and the firm has twenty-eight days to reply. Your sister has asked for some time before you talk. Those are waits you chose, for a reason, and you know when they end. The habit is the other kind of wait. Nobody agreed to it, it has no end date, and you didn't really choose it.

Take the grievance you wrote down at the end of the last chapter. Ask what a move would have looked like in the first month. Then ask what you were afraid would happen if you'd made it. The answer to the second question tells you which of the five payments you've been collecting.