The invitations that slowed down on their own
You saw the photograph on a Thursday evening, and it took you a moment to work out what you were looking at.
Four people you know, somewhere pleasant, on a night you’d spent at home with the telly on. Nothing hidden about it. Somebody had put it up the way people do, with the wrong angle and half of somebody’s elbow in it, because it had been a nice evening.
Your first thought wasn’t that you’d been left out. You know them. You’d trust any one of them with a key to the house.
Your first thought was a question, and it came quicker than you’d have liked. When did they last ask me?
And you couldn’t answer it. That question is the whole of tonight’s essay.
Nothing happened, and that’s the problem
There was no row. Nobody cooled off. If you rang any of them tomorrow they’d be delighted, they’d mean it, and you’d have a lovely hour of it.
What happened is that you said no. Not once. Over about three years, with something true behind it every single time, to people who were being kind to you.
Last week we looked at the things you’ve stopped doing, and I asked you to write one of them down with a year next to it. Tonight is the other side of that page. It’s what your noes have been doing out in the world while you were at home, being entirely reasonable.
Because a no isn’t a private event. It feels like one. You’re on your own when you send it, usually in the evening, usually with a small apology folded into it. But it goes to a person, and that person does something with it.
What an invitation costs the one who sends it
Have a think about it from their side.
Asking you is a small risk. They’re putting something forward and you might not want it, and there’s a version of that which stings slightly, even between people who are fond of each other.
Nobody minds once. Nobody minds twice either, and the second time they’ll say something generous about how it’s a shame and there’ll be another one soon.
By about the fourth, something has changed, and it changed without anybody deciding it. They’ve learned that asking you tends to produce a no. They’re not cross about it. They’ve quietly reclassified you as somebody for whom an invitation is a bit of an imposition, and once that’s happened, not asking becomes the considerate thing to do. They don’t want to put you on the spot, or make you say no again.
They stopped out of kindness to you. That is exactly why nobody ever mentioned it.
Three different reasons, one identical route
I want to put three women side by side, because you’ll recognise yourself in one of them and assume the other two are a different subject.
If it was your body, you said no to anything long, anything far from home, anything you couldn’t easily get away from, because you didn’t know how the day would go and you weren’t going to find that out in front of people.
If it was the room, you said no to the evening where you wouldn’t know anybody, and then to the evenings where you’d only know one person, and the list of places you’ll walk into on your own got shorter by about one a year.
If it was being seen, you said no to being in the photograph, to the bit at the front, to the thing that would have had your name on it.
Three completely different reasons. Now look at what each one actually was. A reasonable no, given to a person, who then had to decide whether to ask you again. That’s the whole of it, and it’s identical in all three. The reason you gave made no difference whatsoever to what it taught them, because they never saw the reason. They only ever saw the no.
What you did with the quiet
Then the diary went quiet, and you had to make sense of it.
You didn’t conclude that people are polite and that four noes is plenty. You didn’t do the arithmetic at all, because the arithmetic was spread across three years and you were only ever looking at one week of it.
What you concluded was something about yourself. You’d have phrased it carefully, if anybody had asked. That you’ve got a smaller life now. That you’re not really part of things any more. That you’re the sort of woman people don’t think of, and that it’s probably fair enough, a given.
That’s the expensive part. Not the Thursday you missed. The sentence you now carry about the kind of person you’ve turned into, built out of evidence you produced yourself and then read back as though somebody else had written it.
What it has actually cost you
The thing I most often have to say out loud, sitting with women here in York who have ended up in this exact spot, is that the accepting is rarely what went first. The suggesting went first.
Somewhere in those three years you stopped being the one who says shall we. You stopped picking the date, stopped sending the message that starts the thing off, stopped putting anything in the diary more than a fortnight ahead, because a fortnight ahead is a guess and you’d rather wait and see how you’re fixed.
Waiting to see took over from deciding, so quietly that you’d struggle to say when.
And once you’re no longer the one suggesting, you are completely dependent on being asked, which is the very thing that has been tailing off.
None of this is a verdict
I want to be plain about that, because there’s a temptation to take it as confirmation of something you’d already half decided about yourself.
It’s arithmetic. A hundred small polite decisions, on both sides, not one of which anybody would defend on its own, adding up to a diary with more free evenings in it than you ever wanted.
Nobody chose it. That’s the only reason it was able to happen.
This week
Get last week’s piece of paper out, and turn it over.
On the back, write down two people. Not everybody, and not a list. Two, who used to ask you and don’t now.
You’re not going to ring them, or do anything at all with this yet, and I do mean that. All I want is for them to become two people with names, instead of a feeling about how you’re regarded, because a feeling can’t be looked at and two names can.
Then put it back where you’ll come across it again.
Next Sunday I’ll get to the thing you keep waiting for before you’ll put anything back in the diary. You’ll know what I mean as soon as you see it, and I want to show you why it never turns up in the way you’re expecting.
When you are ready to step into the after, book a Reset Session at HypnoGirl.
Confidence Connection is the Business, Social and Body confidence blog written by Kathryn Dunn, a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist based in York, Yorkshire and working online. One essay each week, in plain language, and one thing worth trying. More at ConfidenceConnection.co.uk
Twelve Minutes Before You Walk In is a free relaxation recording, about twelve minutes long, for the times you want to feel calmer before social events or business meetings. It’s a general relaxation recording rather than a treatment for anything. Sign up here and you’ll also join Confidence Connection, my weekly email, which carries each new post to your inbox along with a bit extra.
Hypnotherapy is not a substitute for medical care and does not diagnose any condition. The essays and the recording are for information and relaxation, and sit alongside the care you get from your GP.
