‘What did you do?’ she asked. She’d known, vaguely, that I’d dealt with something similar.
I told her the outline: the family meeting, the alternatives list, the specific and limited offer, the clear boundary about my office. I didn’t tell her it was a formula and I didn’t tell her it would definitely work. I told her what I’d done and what had come of it.
‘The thing that helped the most,’ I said, ‘was being specific. Not I need space or I need them to respect my life. But: this room, these hours, this is what I need from you. Specific enough that there’s no ambiguity about what’s being asked. Specific enough that keeping the agreement is easy and breaking it is also easy to notice.’
‘What if they don’t accept it?’ she asked.
‘Then you know where you are,’ I said. ‘Which is also useful information.’
She looked at me. ‘That’s not very reassuring,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not. But knowing where you are is better than not knowing and just absorbing it.’
She nodded. A week later she told me she’d had the conversation with her parents — not the same conversation I’d had, hers, for her situation — and it had gone okay. ‘Not great,’ she said. ‘Okay. But they know where I stand now.’
That’s usually the best you can hope for. They know where you stand now. Everything that follows is built on that.
## The Specific Thing About Capable People
I want to return to the capable thing one more time, because I’ve been thinking about it since my mother said it and I don’t think I’ve fully worked it out.