There's a Wrong Way to Be Happy for Someone

Your daughter rings to say she got the job. A neighbor's grandson has been accepted somewhere. A friend has finally, finally sold the house.

And you say the right thing. "Oh, that's wonderful." You mean every word of it. You are genuinely, quietly glad for her.

It turns out that isn't quite enough — and not because you didn't care. Because of something about these moments that nobody ever explains.

For a long time, psychologists studying relationships looked almost entirely at the hard times. Who comforts whom. Who shows up when things fall apart. Then a group of researchers asked a stranger question: what happens when things go right?

They found there are really only four ways to answer somebody's good news. You can light up and ask for more of it. You can be pleased but say little. You can point out the catch. Or you can let it drift and change the subject.

You'd guess the first is best and the last is worst, and you'd be right about both. The surprise is where the quiet one lands. Being warmly, mildly, undemonstratively glad for someone — the response most of us were raised to think of as gracious — sat far closer to the unhelpful end than anyone expected. People whose partners answered them that way reported less closeness and less trust, not more.

We all know to show up when things go wrong. Nobody ever taught us to show up when they go right.

Your friend who sold the house isn't telling you a fact. She is handing you something. What happens next decides whether it grows or shrinks — because telling somebody is what makes a good feeling bigger in the first place. But only if the somebody takes it, turns it over, and looks at it.

And here is the finding that ought to rearrange a few things. How a person responds to your good news predicts the health of the relationship better than how they respond to your bad news. Better. The tearful call at midnight matters — but the ordinary afternoon when she says she got in, and you say tell me everything and mean it, matters more.

Which is rather good news itself. Disasters are rare and hard to get right. Small pieces of good fortune turn up constantly, and all they ask is that you stay in the conversation a little past what politeness requires.