On Being Thanked

Men thank me constantly, and most of it is not gratitude. It is a request for reassurance wearing better clothes.

You can hear the difference if you listen for what follows. Real thanks ends. It is said, and then he goes quiet, or goes to sleep, or goes back to whatever he was doing before, because the thing is complete and nothing further is required of either of us. The other kind trails upward at the end. It is asking a question. Was that right. Are we still as we were. Did I do well enough that this continues.

I understand the impulse. He has just been given something he wanted and there is a moment immediately afterwards where the whole arrangement feels precarious to him, as though the wanting itself might have cost him standing. So he thanks me again, slightly differently, to see what comes back.

I generally do not answer the second one. Not to be withholding. Because answering it teaches him that the way to be reassured is to ask indirectly, and I would rather he asked me directly, in which case he would get a direct answer and we could both stop doing this.

What I do notice is the man who thanks me for the refusals. That is rarer and it is not politeness. It means he has understood that a no was also a decision made about him, made with attention, and that the attention was the thing he was actually after. Once a man works that out he tends to stop performing gratitude altogether, because he no longer needs to check.

Say it once. I heard you. It is enough, and the silence afterwards is not me being displeased. It is the thing being finished.