Stop Keeping Score
Have you ever kept score in a relationship?
Scorekeeping looks like focusing on what you perceive to be your efforts vs your partner’s efforts. That’s the main dish, but it comes with a side of self-righteous indignation. In your head, it might sound like …
I clean up the house more often
I put the kids to bed more often
I schedule date nights more often
I apologize for mistakes more often
I keep to the budget more often
I organize family dinners more often
I initiate sex more often
And so on.
Keeping score in your marriage or intimate relationship is somewhat common. Many fall into this behavior, but it isn’t at all helpful. It erodes intimacy.
This brings us to the theme we will be reviewing in the month of May: Relational Generosity.
Relational generosity is the opposite of scorekeeping. It is a mindset that sees your relationship as a dynamic ecosystem. If you nourish it, it is much more likely to flourish. But if you poison it with resentment, that can bleed into other parts of your relationship and become toxic. Therefore, relational generosity commits to humility and the service of the greater good of the relationship. It does not keep score.
Why live this way? Because it is better for you and your relationship. Relational Generosity helps grow a loving environment.
Why Scorekeeping Kills Love
Scorekeeping, on the other hand, will dismantle goodwill in a relationship one resentful thought at a time. It doesn’t typically happen all at once; it builds as it rolls along. Like a snowball tumbling down a mountainside, if it gets enough momentum, it can become massive or even trigger an avalanche.
The same is true of scorekeeping. It is a nasty negativity trap.
Consider this. If you have 10 years of scorekeeping that you’re holding onto, then the next time your partner makes a mistake or acts mindlessly, you won’t react to this one moment in time; you will react to all of the resentment that you have stuffed in your back pocket — 10 years' worth.
Your response will be disproportionate to the actual event. And you will lose track of the real person in front of you.
In your head, it might sound something like …
“Oh, of course! Here we go. Looks like I’ll be the responsible one AGAIN, like always.”
And whether you mean to communicate this or not, it will almost certainly come out of you sideways. You might shut down, act like a dutiful martyr, get sarcastic or snippy, or maybe even lash out with a little tantrum.
Your resentment makes you see your partner as some kind of monster.
However, Relational Generosity helps you remember that your spouse/partner is an imperfect person (just like you), that you love them, and that you want to have a great life with them.
Generosity means making the loving, nourishing choice because that is good for the relationship — for you and your partner. You both drink out of the same well, so to speak, so even if your partner does something unhelpful that hurts the relationship, adding your resentment to the mix doesn’t improve anything; it just makes things more toxic.
So let’s commit to ending the scorekeeping. Instead, join me in remembering to choose Relational Generosity.
Happy to be in your corner,
Tom Page, LCPC
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