The craving always opens high

Listen to the first offer it makes. It is never modest. It asks for the whole evening: pick some up on the way home, take the night off, start clean tomorrow with a proper plan. It sounds outrageous, so you refuse, and then something worth noticing happens. You feel reasonable. Out of your own generosity you come back with one cigarette, and that number feels like yours because you are the one who said it out loud. The whole move takes about four seconds.

That opening was never a real request. It was an anchor, set high on purpose so that anything smaller would read as restraint. Every negotiator alive uses it, and the habit learned it long before you noticed. Once your mind has held the number for the entire evening, one looks like a concession you extracted. You did not compromise. You got moved. The useful question is not whether one is worth it tonight. It is who decided that one was the middle of the range.

So name the move out loud the second it happens. That was the opening bid. Not a proposal, a position. The moment you call it what it is, the arithmetic falls apart, because you can see plainly that the whole range was written by the other side of the table. You never got to set the numbers. Someone handed you a menu and let you feel clever for ordering from the cheap end of it. You are allowed to close the menu.

And you can decline the entire exchange. Not aggressively, not with a speech about your reasons. There is no bid I am considering tonight. Then go do the next ordinary thing your evening actually contains. Ask God for a clear head in those four seconds where the number gets set, because that is the only place any of this is won or lost. You are not a tough negotiator here. You are simply not at the table, which is a far better place to stand.