I’ve realized something after working with folks for the past 20-something years. We all have a habit, a propensity, a default setting of comparing ourselves to others. Perhaps this is attributable to when we were cavemen/cavewomen. Perhaps there is some evolutionary purpose that helped keep us safe when we were living a much simpler life. Well, just like it is not healthy for us to compare ourselves with our neighbors (or try to “keep up with the Joneses”), we also seem to have this propensity to compare ourselves to our partners. When I meet a married couple, I find that—sometimes—they will compare how “behind” or “lacking” the other partner is whenever they feel exhausted, defeated, or hopeless in their relationship. This ends up being a negative factor, causing each to accuse the other of not working hard enough on the relationship. To me, this is very close to the idea of “scorekeeping.” Scorekeeping is the idea of keeping a mental list of all the effort you put into the relationship, as opposed to the other person and their lack thereof. Essentially, it is like when I played Putt-Putt with my parents as a child. Dad would take the scorecard, and we would mark down how many putts it took each of us to sink the ball. If you are trying to tally every time you do something for your partner and every time they do (or fail to do) something for you, the “game” will be skewed every time. I now suggest that each person in the relationship—which is usually marriage, in my instance—try doggedly to quit looking at their partner's efforts. I recommend that they imagine wearing horse blinders. Have you ever seen horse blinders? Ingenious inventions that help horses stay focused on the ride they provide, usually for those in vacation spots such as Dahlonega, Georgia, or Greenville, South Carolina (or, at least, those are two locations I’ve noticed them). (They also help keep horses from getting spooked). Perhaps if we focus on what we are doing in the relationship and work at diving all into the relationship—by giving it 100% of our attention/focus/effort—we can stay focused in our relationships and not get spooked by whatever is going on in the world around us.
In the style of the Dos Equis actor, Stay Focused, My Friends.