Relationship Advice - Avoid Scorekeeping

Keeping score and making sure that you each only give only 50% to your relationship is a sure way to create conflict and frustration. When you each are focused on making sure that you are getting what you want from the other, you may completely miss the joy that comes from giving unconditionally to each other. I had a client ask, “Why is it that I can love my children, no matter what they do, but I don’t feel the same way about my husband?” Most people love their children unconditionally. Those same people will often put conditions on their love for their partner. They feel and behave lovingly toward their partner when they are happy with their partner or when their partner does what they expect or want. They often choose to withdraw their love from their partner when they are feeling hurt or angry.

The question is not what am I getting from this relationship; the question is what am I bringing to this relationship. Ask yourself, is the tone of our relationship selfish or generous. If your partner asks for your help, is your response, “Do it yourself”, or “Why should I.”

We are ultimately responsible to meet our own needs. We are not however responsible to make sure that our partner meets our needs. When we need our partner to make us feel loveable, or good looking or good enough, we have already lost. When we love and accept our self we are much more able to give generously to our partner. And we are much more able to feel the love that they are offering to us.

The best relationships are between those partners who are both willing to give 100% to their relationship and to each other. And they are busier counting the ways their partner is wonderful, than counting the ways their partner messed up. One excellent piece of relationship advice - avoid scorekeeping.

“Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something. They're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.” Anthony Robbins