The plain ask

This chapter is about the sentence. The guidance is mine, built on the research in earlier chapters. It hasn't been tested as a set.

Say what you'd like and when. A plain ask has two parts. "I'd like you to do bedtime tonight." "Could we talk for twenty minutes after dinner?" "Would you ring me on Thursday after the appointment?" If a stranger reading the sentence would know exactly what you wanted, it passes the test from chapter 5.

Add a reason if it helps, and keep it short. "It's been a rough week" is plenty. You don't have to justify a need before you're allowed to have it.

Ask for one thing. People can say yes to one request. If you give them five, they hear a complaint.

Leave the history out. "You never notice when I'm struggling" may be what you feel, and it's an accusation about the past. It invites a defence. "I'm struggling today, and I'd like a hug" is about now, and the natural response to it is a hug. If there's a long-standing pattern you need to raise, that's a separate and bigger conversation, and it goes better on a day when you don't also need something.

Say what kind of response you're after. Chapter 15's list is useful here. "I want to tell you about my day. I don't need solutions, I just want you to listen." Many people, offered a problem, reach for a fix. They mean it kindly. If you tell them at the start what you're after, you're both spared the wrong response.

Pick a moment when they can hear it. They won't take it in through a closed door, or while they're in the middle of something. Late at night when you're both exhausted is a bad time too. "Have you got a minute?" is a good way to open.

Make it a request. Your tone does most of this. If you ask through gritted teeth, the message they get is that you shouldn't have had to ask, and the evening goes much as it would have without the asking. If that's how you feel, wait ten minutes.

Let them answer. They may say yes. They may say, "Not tonight, I've got this deadline, but I can do tomorrow." That's a reasonable reply, and chapter 19 deals with outright refusals. They may also be clumsy about it, especially the first few times, when a plain request from you is a novelty.

Thank them. "Thanks, that really helped" costs you nothing, and it tells them the effort landed. People repeat what they know has worked.

Replace "fine". This is the hardest single change and the most useful. When someone asks if you're all right and you aren't, you have three honest options. You can tell them what's wrong. You can use the holding sentence from chapter 15, "I'm not great, but I don't know what I need yet." Or you can say, "I'm not, and I'd rather not talk about it just now, but thanks for asking." "Fine" is none of these. It ends the conversation, and then you hold it against the other person that the conversation ended.

There's one piece of research to keep in mind for the early weeks. Nickola Overall and colleagues filmed sixty-one couples while each person tried to get their partner to change something, and followed them up over the next year. Direct approaches, where people said plainly what they wanted, didn't feel very successful at the time. Straight after the conversations they were rated as less effective than gentler, more roundabout ones. But a year on, it was the direct approaches that had produced change. The softer, indirect ones felt better on the day and changed nothing. So a plain ask may feel more awkward than a hint for a while, and you shouldn't judge it by how it feels that day.