The thank you that never got said

Most people have a thank you they never got round to saying, and it usually matters more to the other person than they think.

Most people can name that person straight away. It might be a neighbour who put the bins out every week while a parent was in hospital, a teacher who once kept a struggling student back to say they were not stupid, or a friend who drove two hours on a Sunday to help with a move and never mentioned it again. Asked whether they ever said thank you, many people give some version of the same answer: “they knew.”

Often they did not. In 2018 the psychologists Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley asked people to write a short letter of thanks to someone who had mattered to them, and to predict how that person would react. The writers expected the letters to be welcome. The people who received them were happier and more surprised than the writers had predicted, and less uncomfortable. They were also more surprised by what the letters said, which suggests they had not known the gratitude was there.

That gap is why so many thank yous never get said. People hold back because the gratitude seems obvious, because it might embarrass the other person, or because it feels too late to bring up something from years ago. The study suggests the first two worries are overblown. What feels obvious to the grateful person was never said out loud, so to the other person it is news, and most of the awkwardness sits with the one doing the thanking. As for late, a thank you that arrives ten years on tells someone that what they did was remembered for ten years.

The ones that get lost are usually for ordinary things. Big help comes with a moment that asks for thanks, like a funeral, a hospital stay or a move. Everyday help never gets that moment. Lifts to work, dinner kept warm for someone who got in late, and a friend who always picks up the phone all become part of how life works, and nobody thinks to thank someone for how life works.

The thank yous that land are specific. “Thanks for everything” is kind, and it is forgotten by the weekend. “When I failed my exams you sat in the car with me for an hour without saying a word, and that is why I tried again” is something a person keeps. It names what they did and what it changed. It does not need to explain why it is being said now.

A text works and a call is better. A few handwritten lines are the kind of thing people keep in a drawer for years. Saying it face to face is best of all, even if the words are read off a phone.

Sometimes the person has died, and that is often when the unsaid thank you starts to hurt. It is still worth writing down. It will not reach them, but it puts the thing into words, and there is often someone else who would be glad to hear it, such as a partner, a child or an old friend. People who are grieving rarely hear new stories about the person they lost, and a thank you like this is one.

It takes a few minutes to write, and it tends to mean more to the person reading it than the person writing it expects.