On Offers

The Case for Saying Yes

The psychologist John Gottman is famous for being able to predict with 80-90 percent accuracy (depending on the study) whether a new marriage will succeed or fail after he observes a couple for only an hour or so.¹ Among the many signs he looks for is how one spouse receives an offer (Gottman calls them bids) made by the other spouse.

What is an offer? Well, it can be almost anything interesting, cute, or nice that you want to share with another person: “Taste this soup I’m making” or “This article I’m reading is so interesting—let me read you this paragraph” or “Hey mom, watch me jump off this picnic table” or, in our family, “Bennie’s outside!”

Bennie is our neighbors’ dog, and every morning and evening he heads into the woods in front of our house. He galumphs along like an oversized, overeager, adorable toddler. When one of us yells “Bennie!” we all come running to see him.

When someone makes us an offer, do we stop what we’re doing to share and appreciate a moment of connection? Or do we turn away, reflecting back either a distinct lack of enthusiasm (“Mmm hmm, that’s nice dear”) or open irritation?

To be fair, who among us hasn’t wanted to interrupt Tom Hiddleston?

Offers can come from anyone—not just our spouse, parents, or kids, but also friends, acquaintances, and strangers. Saying yes to offers, even to those that come from total strangers, gives us the opportunity to learn something, embark on an adventure, and make connections. Saying yes to offers will make us happy.

But first, some caveats

I’d like to note up front that I’m not talking about the kind of “offers” that, for example, I received relentlessly from age 12 (!) to about age 30 from random dudes on the street. I’m sure readers can supply their own examples of ill-intentioned offers. The offers I advocate accepting are generous not selfish, and could add to rather than take from our lives.

We also need to extend compassion and understanding to those of us who have so many demands on our time that we just can’t take on yet one more thing. When I was a high school teacher, I once rejected my new neighbor’s offer to hang out at a campfire and have a beer with her and her friends, because I was so overwhelmed with work. All I could think of was the enormous pile of grading I had waiting for me, and so I said no. (Luckily, she gave me another chance and we became friends.) One consequence of our culture of workism is that we miss out on opportunities for fun, learning, and connection because we are just too dang tired.

Then too, it can feel so awkward to accept an offer, especially from a stranger. We don’t want to seem weird, or stuck in an unfamiliar situation where people might laugh at us. Or maybe we will be bored, or we might be unable to extricate ourselves, or we might somehow inadvertently offend someone.

Finally, we might worry about scams. Is the person legit? Or are they trying to cheat us? To this objection I offer (see what I did there?) a counterpoint from one of my heroes, Rutger Bregman: in fact you should be scammed at least a couple of times in your life. Your being willing to be scammed says something lovely about you: it means that you have an open and generous attitude to other people. In spite of a small risk that you could lose some money, a willingness to be scammed is almost always the right way to bet, because most people are decent and trustworthy. By contrast, if you go through life with an attitude of fear and suspicion of everyone you meet, you will close yourself off from opportunities that could bring you happiness.

A tale of three accepted offers

I am a confirmed introvert, and so my first impulse is always to say no to offers. And yet when I have said yes I have never regretted it. What follows is three stories where I hesitated at first—for what I thought were very good reasons!—but then said yes and won big.

Reason 1: Time constraints. When I had a toddler and another baby on the way, I sometimes managed to carve out time to go to Shabbat services with my mother-in-law. One Saturday morning, Jerry, the gabbai (a sort of head usher who helps run the services), who had been seriously ill with cancer, showed up to services for the first time in a long while. After services, as my mother-in-law and I were walking back to the car, she mentioned that Jerry had sent me his greetings. I was tempted to shrug him off and go straight home to do laundry or something (when you have a toddler there is always laundry), but on an impulse I decided to run a block back to the synagogue to say a quick hello to him. I gave him a big hug and told him how much I appreciated his skill in running the services and his kind words for everyone. We chatted a bit about our kids, and I went on my way. We learned later that he had come to the synagogue one last time to say goodbye; he died a few days later. Accepting his offer, in spite of the constraints on my time, gave me the invaluable chance to say thank you and a final goodbye.

Reason 2: Awkwardness. One Sunday afternoon when we were living in Prague, my husband and I decided to explore a new neighborhood. We were strolling along when we heard a querulous growl from a tiny, grumpy schnauzer. “Štastný pes—máme strach!” we said, laughing. (“Fierce dog! We are scared!”) The dog’s owner, an older lady, came out to restrain the dog.

This isn’t in fact Sylvia’s dog, but it might as well be. So grouchy!

We chatted briefly in halting Czech on both sides, until we discovered that we were all native speakers of English, to which we switched. The lady, Sylvia, invited us into her garden for tea and conversation. How awkward, right? A total stranger! What would we ever talk about?! Well, readers, it turns out, lots! Over tea and cookies, as the schnauzer glowered at us from under a bench, Sylvia told us about how she first came to Prague in 1967 on a college trip. She met a man and fell in love at first sight. She returned to England just long enough to settle her affairs and then moved to Prague to marry the love of her life. She lived through the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution, and now she tends her garden. After a pleasant half hour or so, we said our goodbyes and went on our way, all the richer for having learned a personal story from a tumultuous time in Prague’s history.

Reason 3: Fear of scams. When we were first married, my husband and I went to Israel, to visit his friends, former Russian refuseniks, who were now living in Israel. One day Zvi and Daphna took us to Abu Ghosh, an Arab village. Shortly after we got out of the car, a man approached us. Did we want a personal guided tour? Our first response was to say No! Leave us alone! What was he up to? Did he want to take our money or trick us? But we decided to say yes, and the man proceeded to guide us around his town, sharing its history and beauties, some personal anecdotes, and his love of his village. After about an hour he pointed us toward a restaurant (where I had the best felafel of my life) and said goodbye. We offered him money, but he refused it, saying that he just wanted to share his knowledge with us. It wasn't a scam! It was a generous gift from an armchair historian, and it remains one of my favorite travel experiences.

So, readers, what about you? Please share your stories! Have you ever accepted an offer even though you felt awkward at first? How did it go? What did you learn?

The tidbit

George Herbert is one of my favorite poets, and “Love”² is my very favorite of his poems. Herbert belonged to the Metaphysical school, which also included Donne, Carew, Herrick, and many others. But unlike Donne, who expressed his struggles with his faith through famously clever and syntactically challenging poetry, Herbert was a minister and expressed his devotion to God in shimmering, pure language and straightforward metaphors.³ And yet “Love” also winks at the racier poetry of his contemporaries, the Cavaliers. The double entendres below are not your imagination! I think “Love” expresses perfectly how difficult it can be to accept an offer, especially if we feel awkward or as though we don’t deserve it. And yet how rewarding it is to say yes!

Love

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lacked anything.

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here":

Love said, "You shall be he."

"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on thee."

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame

Go where it doth deserve."

"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"

"My dear, then I will serve."

"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."

So I did sit and eat.

1. The replication crisis has come for Gottman, albeit in a limited way. His method for determining whether a marriage will be unhappy and/or end in divorce does hold up when other researchers test it. However, his ideas have been used unsuccessfully in government programs that aimed to help low-income people establish and maintain happy marriages. These programs did as poorly as or worse than the control groups that received no intervention.

2. Technically this poem is called “Love 3” because Herbert wrote three poems called “Love,” and this is the last one. But “Love 3” sounds like the title of a cheesy rom-com sequel, and besides, no one remembers the other two “Love” poems. So I am just calling this poem “Love.”

3. Before I quit teaching, I had planned to develop a class called “Believers and Heretics.” In our first class we would have discussed “Batter My Heart” by Donne and “Love” by Herbert.