His words say one thing and his actions say another. Which do you believe?

It's eleven at night and your phone is face down on the duvet. This is the hour you decide it in, and it's the worst hour you've got.

Nobody needs a method at four in the afternoon. At four the facts are obvious, they take about ten seconds, and there's somewhere you have to be. You need it at eleven, on your own, when every sentence you've got is an interpretation wearing a fact's clothes.

What you're doing at that hour is writing a record. It's got the week in it, and his words, and the tone of his words, and what the tone probably meant on a good day. It's long, it's well argued, and it can't answer you, because there's only one person in it.

The other record was being written the whole time

There's a second record of the same week. He writes that one himself, at his own speed, in things you can watch happen. Nothing is hidden from you. You're just too busy with the first one to open it.

Blair tells this one against herself. Month three, a man she met at a climbing gym, a café. She asked him the one thing she knew better than to ask, because she needed a yes and a question can't hand you one. He said, "I think so." She spent three weeks improving that sentence. Then a Tuesday came, he didn't write, she didn't write back, and that was that.

He used a good sentence as a door left ajar. Not closed. Not open. And I stood at that door for three weeks waiting for it to open the rest of the way.

from the chapter Say It Once, Twelve Times

Her own bill for those three weeks comes at the end of the chapter, and the three words that matter in it are the last three.

What he did with it was the information, and I read it three weeks late.

from the chapter Say It Once, Twelve Times

The same week, written twice

Four ordinary situations. First the version most of us produce, then the one he was writing anyway.

He said nothing at all and changed the subject. Your version: a text that evening asking if he's all right, a lighter one the next day asking what he thought, and a third that's a joke, so the first two can be filed as jokes too. What he did: one week, nothing. Two weeks, one message. Three weeks, and three weeks counts as an answer on its own.

He said, "I'm not ready," or "let's see where it goes." Your version: a fortnight deciding which of the two he meant, and whether his tone made it warmer than the words. What he did: he left the door ajar instead of closing it. If he hasn't come back to it himself, you don't have to go and ask him twice.

He agreed you were exclusive. His profile is still on the app. Your version: reading the whole conversation again for the part you might have got wrong, then deciding not to raise it, because raising it would look like you'd been watching him. What he did: the app gone inside a week is an answer. Still there a month later is also an answer.

He said, "Yes. I want this to be just us." Your version: three months of deciding in private whether he meant it. That work has no end, because you can't examine a sentence until it confesses. What he did: name one thing that changed. "He said yes" is a fact, not an action. If you can't name one, that's your answer.

Why the long record can never answer you

Put the four side by side and they stop being four problems. Every one is an evening, or a month of evenings, spent on what he said. None of it goes to what he did.

A man who tells you he doesn't want what you want has given you information, not a puzzle. So believe that information.

from the chapter Something Is Wrong With Them

Writing the short record is easy. It takes four lines, and the four lines are the trouble, because four lines is an insulting size for something you've given a year of your life to. A puzzle at least pays attention to you. So you go back to the long side, where there's always more work and none of it ever finishes.

There's a second cost, and you pay it the same night. You write the long record by arguing with yourself, and the argument doesn't leave what you noticed in one piece.

Keep it small enough to be true. A fact before an interpretation.

from the chapter What Would He Do If I Wasn't Watching

What you noticed was true when you noticed it. It just didn't survive the night.

What the silence is worth, in weeks

The book does put numbers on a man who has stopped writing, and they're short enough to keep in your head. One week without writing, you don't write. It's a Tuesday. Two weeks, you write once, something concrete rather than "everything okay?" Three weeks, you don't write again.

Once is a Tuesday. Twice is a question. Three times is an answer.

from the chapter Say It Out Loud

Your friends can't sort this for you, and it was never their job. They've got the story in the version you walked in with, in the voice you told it in, and they love you, so they go to work on that version. The friend who says the flat thing over dinner is doing you an enormous favour. She's also not there at eleven.

If nothing's been said out loud yet, that comes first: how to say it in one sentence. If you already know what you'd say and want to know how long to leave it standing, the numbers are here. And if the long record has been eating your evenings, that has a cause worth reading.

The short record is four lines long and nobody writes it at eleven at night on their own. There's a way to do it where you say what happened, and what comes back is the fact with your interpretation lifted off it, and which week you're in, and what that week asks of you. No prediction about him, because there isn't one to be had. It's on the phone that's already beside you.

Find out what you actually saw.

The three weeks she paid for are in Castles Want Queens, Not Princesses, in the chapter she wrote against herself.

Isn't watching what he does just keeping score?

Score-keeping runs on interpretation, which is the long record. This is the opposite. You write the observable action, you leave the reason off the page, and you stop. There's no case being built, and nobody's being graded.

What actually counts as an action?

Whether the ordinary furniture of his week has you inside it, and whether he brought the subject up again himself. His tone doesn't count. How fast he replies doesn't count. Him going out with his friends on Fridays doesn't count either.

He's genuinely busy. Isn't that different?

It might well be, and it doesn't change what you do. Busy is a reason, and a reason is an interpretation. Keep the fact: this many days, no message, after that was said. Then let the number you set in advance do its work.