What If the Second Marshmallow Never Comes?

On scarcity, self-denial, and the hidden cost of waiting

When Covid collapsed society, my yoga studio closed and the community moved to meet-ups in the park under the generous leadership of Bess, a yogi with a warm smile and ineffable ability to see and embrace beauty in every circumstance. We met weekly, moving in unison under the shade of gently swaying leaves, sunlight filtering through, cool grass beneath our feet.

When society began to tentatively re-open, Bess continued our weekend park yoga and added a rooftop class above the studio’s newly rented space on Monday nights, bringing together our shared love of fresh air, movement, and sunsets. I longed to join her and the community of warm-hearted yogis gathered each week, but I did not.

Throughout Covid, my small family managed with one car. I had become the sole income-earner, and with few places to go, it just made sense.

I live in the suburbs outside Los Angeles, a notoriously and aggravatingly car-dependent region. So this involved some sacrifice. But as society re-opened, I found myself saying “no” to more and more things if they happened at times when someone else needed the car. No problem. Life involves choice and sacrifice. I’ll go one day…

I had saved up money to buy a small car, even ordered it, and then an unexpected situation blindsided us and the money went elsewhere. No problem. I was grateful I had the savings. Appreciative of the refund on my deposit. Maybe next year then… or the next…

I wanted to take a creative writing class my incredible author friend Michelle Dowd taught at the local college, but I didn’t have a way to get there on Wednesday nights. Maybe next year…

I learned early about sacrifice and saving. At nine years old, I opened a bank account to begin saving money for college, diligently depositing coins earned from newspaper delivery in the hopes of a future I knew I had to build for myself if I wanted something different from the poverty that strained my childhood home.

I would have aced the marshmallow test.

Photo by 𝒮 𝐴 ℛ 𝐴 ✿ on Unsplash

In the late 1960s, Stanford researchers placed children alone in a room with a single marshmallow and told them if they waited 15 minutes to eat it, they would be given two. If they ate the immediately supplied sweet, it would be the only one they would get.

Longitudinally, they found that the children who waited and received the second marshmallow went on to achieve more. The study became a cultural parable about self-control. Delayed gratification became a predictor of success; eating the marshmallow became evidence of impulsivity, spelling doom. The lesson was irresistible in its simplicity: disciplined children become successful adults.

Later research complicated that tidy conclusion. When differences in social and economic backgrounds were accounted for, the predictive value of the experiment shrank significantly.

Other researchers found that children were much more willing to wait for delayed rewards when the adults around them had first demonstrated their promises could be trusted. Waiting, it turns out, isn’t only about self-control. It’s also about trust. When we don’t make or enforce the rules, what’s at play isn’t simply self-mastery, but a deeper question of whether people and systems are reliable – about whether we’ve experienced that what’s promised actually arrives.

In the mythology that’s sprung up around this famed experiment, we’ve failed to consider why immediacy can be so compelling, labeling it simply a personality deficit.

Little children are not innately good or bad. Their decisions are not verdicts on character, but a reflection on social learning and varied early life experiences. When poverty, broken promises, or unpredictable adults teach a child that the future is uncertain, taking what is available now may be adaptive behavior rather than a failure of self-control.

The reality is that children raised in poverty and unpredictability are less likely to succeed based on those environmental factors alone, the lack of supportive scaffolding, and the challenge of pulling oneself out of quicksand.

Some of us make it out. Too many do not.

But there is one other thing I am realizing that the moralized marshmallow test does not account for:

What happens when a child who has learned to postpone everything, to sacrifice, to make herself small enough and to need less, grows into an adult who is still trying to earn her right to fully live?

Sometimes, when tomorrow is not guaranteed, we learn to live for today.

But sometimes, we learn to sacrifice today in thin hopes of tomorrow.

Neither tells us who is virtuous.

Trauma and neglect and scarcity imprint on vulnerable hearts in different ways - with different costs.

In May of 2024, I attended Bess’s funeral. I miss the beauty of her spirit, her warmth and light and love. And in the ache of her absence, I realized I never made it to her sunset rooftop class. One day became never.

My writing professor friend retired at the end of the semester in which I’d neglected to enroll.

Sometimes the second marshmallow isn’t a test – it’s a trap.

After we said goodbye to Bess, I found the car I’d hoped to buy for sale, used. I took out a loan. And I signed up for a writing retreat with my retired teacher friend.

The answer is not always self-discipline and delayed gratification. Sometimes it is learning to live in the moment. Sometimes the higher good is to seize the day, to feed ourselves with what is available. To be present and savor the sweetness of what is.

I won’t wait any longer for my life to start, believing the lie that patience and self-denial are the highest virtues.

I am still grateful for the nine-year-old girl who opened a bank account and began saving her paper-route money for college. Her willingness to sacrifice helped build the foundation of the life I have now.

But she doesn’t have to run my life forever.

Promises are broken. Hopes are dashed. Life can be brutally short.

I won’t spend the rest of my life waiting to earn the right to pleasure, self-disciplining myself out of present joys.

Sometimes waiting is wise.

And sometimes, one marshmallow is enough.

I’m Deborah Vinall, PsyD, LMFT, a trauma therapist and author exploring trauma, relationships, belonging, and the complicated work of being human.

My books—including Gaslighting: A Step-by-Step Recovery Guide and Trauma Recovery Workbook for Teens—have helped readers around the world understand and heal from relational and other forms of trauma and find their way back to themselves.

Here on Mental Health Musings, I explore those themes more personally, blending clinical insight with reflection, and occasionally sharing guided meditations and resources for healing.

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