What the habit costs

You may think of the habit as costing the odd bad evening. I think it costs a good deal more. Most of this chapter is my own reckoning, and I'll say where a study comes in.

The thing itself. This is the most obvious cost and the easiest to forget. You didn't get the bath, or the phone call, or the promotion. Each of them was probably available if you'd asked.

A second hurt on top of the first. Wright and Roloff's finding was that the partner's failure to notice becomes its own injury. A hard week turns into a hard week plus a grievance against the person best placed to help with it.

A ledger. Each failed test gets recorded. After some years the ledger is long, and the other person has never seen it. It colours how you read everything they do. A forgotten errand becomes one more entry in a list of evidence that they don't care about you.

What it's like for them. They're living with someone who's intermittently unhappy with them for reasons that aren't explained. I'd expect that to produce a constant low anxiety. They scan for moods and try things at random, and some of what they try makes matters worse. Some become over-attentive. Others withdraw, because they can't work out what's wanted and it's less painful to stop trying.

The good things they do. This one is subtle. While you're watching for the one thing you've silently set as the test, you can miss what they're actually offering. Your partner did the online shop on Sunday. They asked if you were all right, and they suggested watching something together. None of it counted with you, because none of it was the thing you were waiting for.

Being known. The habit is meant to protect the feeling of being known, and it does the opposite. If you hide your needs, the other person knows you less well. They have a smoothed-over version of you who's always fine. The way to be known better is to tell them more about yourself.

What children learn. If there are children in the house, they're learning how adults get their needs met. They're learning that you go quiet and wait, and that you're hurt when it doesn't work.

The relationship's capacity for repair. Every couple and every friendship runs into real problems sooner or later. Dealing with them needs two people who can say plainly what's wrong and what they want. If you've had years of practice at saying "fine", that skill isn't there when you need it most.

In return for all that, you've been spared the small discomfort of saying a sentence like "Could you do bedtime tonight?" You've also kept open the possibility of an unprompted kindness, and those are scarcer now than they'd be if the two of you talked more.