Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It's about one habit. You need something from someone close to you. It might be help, or comfort, or some time, or for them to notice that you've had a bad week. You don't say so. You wait for them to see it. They don't, and you're hurt, because it seems to you that if they cared they'd have known. You're more hurt by their not knowing than you would have been by going without the thing itself.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that saying nothing makes sense from the inside. Being understood without having to explain is one of the great pleasures of being close to someone, and asking can feel like admitting it's gone. The second is that the expectation can't be met. What you feel is far less visible than it seems to you. Hints are far less clear than they seem to the person dropping them. Years together make people more confident that they know each other and don't make them much more accurate. So when you wait to see whether someone notices, you aren't testing their love. You're testing whether they can read minds, and nobody can. The third is practical. When you need something, you say what it is in one plain sentence, and you judge the person by what they do next. Chapters 15 to 18 cover how.

This book doesn't say your needs are unreasonable or that the people around you are doing enough. They may not be. It says that you can't find out until they've been told.

Three cautions.

If you're afraid of how your partner will react when you say what you need, this isn't the book for that. I mean afraid of their anger, their contempt, or what they might do. The NHS page on domestic abuse asks two questions. Have you ever felt afraid of your partner? Have you ever changed your behaviour because you're afraid of what your partner might do? If the answer to either is yes, the freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline is open day and night on 0808 2000 247.

If you've stopped telling anyone what you need because you feel you don't deserve anything, or because nothing seems worth asking for, and your mood has been low for a couple of weeks or more, that may be depression. The first step is a GP.

And this book is about ordinary relationships between people of good will. If you've told someone plainly and repeatedly what you need and they've ignored it, you don't have this habit. You have a different problem, and chapter 19 touches on it.

The notes at the back give my sources and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.