The relationship audit, the most important list to make

Make a list of the 20 people you interact with most. Next to each name, write one word. Adds or drains. Not good or bad. Just the energy exchange.

Write the list from your phone rather than from memory. Recent calls, recent messages, the last 2 weeks of your diary. Memory gives you the list you think you have, which is usually the list of people you are fond of. The phone gives you the list you actually have, which is the one that is costing you something.

One word is the whole discipline, and people hate it. The instinct is to write a sentence, because a sentence lets you explain. It is complicated with her. He is going through a lot at the moment. Both of those may be entirely true and neither answers the question, which is only about what happens to your energy in the hour after you see them.

And not good or bad matters because the audit is not a verdict on anybody. Nobody is draining on purpose. Draining is not a character flaw, it is an effect, and plenty of people you love will have it.

If you are not sure which word to write, use the body rather than the opinion. After 20 minutes with this person, am I looser or tighter. Do I go and do something, or do I sit down and look at my phone. Do I find myself replaying the conversation while I unload the dishwasher.

What most women discover: the list is not what they expected. The person they thought was their closest friend is consistently draining. The colleague they thought was difficult is surprisingly energising.

The reason for the surprise is almost always history. You rank people by how long you have known them and by what they once were to you, and the ranking stops being updated. Somebody can be in your top 3 on the strength of a friendship that ended, in substance, 6 years ago, and the only reason it is still in place is that nothing formally happened.

The other common surprise is the duty entries. People you see because you have always seen them, whose place on the list nobody has ever questioned, including you.

This doesn't mean you cut everyone who drains you. Some relationships you maintain by choice, by love, by circumstance. But you maintain them as a choice, not a default. That distinction changes everything.

It changes it in a specific and unglamorous way. A draining relationship you have chosen is one you can prepare for. You put it on a day when nothing else is happening. You give it 90 minutes rather than an open afternoon. You arrange to be somewhere afterwards. None of that is coldness. It is the difference between going into something with your eyes open and being surprised by the same thing for the 11th time.

And there will be names on the list you cannot do anything about at all. A relative. A co-parent. Somebody at work. The audit is still worth doing for those, because knowing that Thursday will cost you something is what lets you stop treating Thursday evening as a personal failure.

You don't have an ocean fence do you. What do you have? A sort of suggestion. A mild preference for people not to entirely walk over you, but you haven't communicated it, and when they do, you apologise to them.

That last part is the bit worth watching in yourself. Listen for the sorry. Sorry, can I just. Sorry, I know you are busy. Sorry, is it all right if. Most people have no idea how often they do it until they count, and once you count it for a day it becomes very difficult to unhear.

The boundary is simply: let me get back to you. Not a wall. Not a weapon. Not a 45 minute explanation of your entire emotional landscape. Just, let me get back to you. Say it without the sorry at the end.

It works because it is not a refusal. It is a delay, and a delay is the only thing most of us actually need. Almost every yes you regret was given inside 4 seconds, while somebody was looking at you. Taken out of the room, the same question is easy.

And you will not be asked to justify it, which is the part people cannot believe in advance. The fear is that the other person will push, and occasionally one does. Mostly they say fine and carry on with their day, because your answer was far more significant to you than it was to them.

The other thing nobody warns you about is that it feels worse than it looks. You will say the sentence and your chest will go, and you will be convinced you have been rude. You have not been rude. You have been unfamiliar, and unfamiliar feels almost exactly the same from the inside.

Do the list again in 3 months. That is where it gets genuinely useful, because the second version tells you what has moved. Usually 2 or 3 names have changed column, and almost always because you changed how you were in those relationships rather than because they did.

The relationship audit, the most important list you'll ever make.

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