What have you been quietly in charge of?
A few questions about your own week. Nothing at the end is a verdict on him.
Where are you with him right now?
Whichever is closest.
How long has it been running this way?
Roughly. You probably know it closer than you'd like.
What have you already tried?
More than one, probably.
When something needs doing between you, who notices first?
Not who does it. Who notices.
You have been naming your own week.
Every answer so far has been a thing you did.
You have named your own week, not his character. That is the only way this ends up being useful, and it is rarer than it sounds at eleven at night.
Which of these have you done in the last month?
Tick everything true. Nobody is counting them against you.
And which of these have you done in the last week?
The small ones. They are the ones that disappear.
In the same month, what came back the other way?
Not what he feels. What he did.
Four things you were told a good partner does.
Every one was handed to you kindly.
The first four ask you to carry it better. The fifth is the only one you can act on tonight.
You are already solving it.
That is not a flaw. It is a habit that works everywhere except here.
At work, a problem left on the table gets worse, so you pick it up. Nobody told you this room runs differently.
"The competent woman doesn't say it once. She handles it. I handled things five ways." From the chapter The Mistakes a Competent Woman Makes.
If you stopped doing all of it tomorrow, what do you think would happen?
No answer here is the better one. It only changes what comes next.
What the job costs, in hours.
Not in love, and not in whether he deserves it.
These are not research. They are what your own answers on the last two screens describe.
Putting a job down is harder than picking one up.
The hands want something to do. That is the part nobody warns you about.
Nothing about this is a talk you have to win.
"when he tells you a problem, your first response isn't a solution. Your first response is a question about the feeling." From the chapter The Mistakes a Competent Woman Makes.
If one part of this got lighter, which would you want first?
Whichever you would notice by Friday.
Who put this together.
The same person as you, a few years earlier.
She works in data for a consulting firm in Chicago, which means her days are spent telling companies their strategy isn't working.
Adding up what you named.
Nobody else has ever counted this.
- Listing the jobs you said you do
- Separating the ones you were asked for
- Finding the one you'd put down first
- Matching it to the method
Here is what you told me you carry.
All of it is yours. None of it is a guess about him.
- In the last month
- You have not said which of them you did.
- In the last week
- You have not said which of the small ones you did.
- What came back
- You have not said what came back.
- Your inventory
- You have not answered either list, so I do not have a count to hand back. An empty screen is not a zero.
This is a list of things you did. It is not a reading of what he feels about them.
Here is the part you have not done yet.
None of it depends on what he decides.
- TonightYou write down the list once, instead of carrying it
- This weekYou put down exactly one of them, on purpose, and say nothing
- The minute after you say itYou know what to do with the silence
- When you say itYou say the one sentence, once, and stop handling it
Four things that are yours. Not one of them is a guess about him.
You don't have to put it down on your own.
The hands want something to do. This is the something.
You tell it what happened. It keeps the fact separate from what you decided the fact meant, finds the one short sentence, and tells you what the week asks for. It won't tell you what he's thinking, which is the point.