Keeping Score

Would you understand what unconditional love is if the person you loved met all your conditions?

~Horacio Jones~

Relationships aren't designed for selfish people.

When it comes to Love and relationships, experience has taught me that things are rarely exclusively black or white. We'd like to believe they are but they really aren't. However, that being said, one of the things I know falls in the black or white category is this - A relationship is not a competition. We say that a lot, but I think very few people understand what that means (myself included, sometimes LOL!).

Have you ever been in a relationship (and/or situationship) where you feel like you are giving everything but getting back very little from your partner? Most times when you feel this way, if you talk about it to people the first thing you shall be told is how this person doesn't deserve you and you should pack up your bags and leave (#ByeFelicia). So if I'm not getting from you what I feel I should be getting from you, or what I feel I deserve from you, this relationship cant work. The thing is though, as "good sounding" as that advice is, it's not always practical in a relationship. And growing up has taught me that not every piece of advice that sounds good, is actually good.

It's important to remember, we don't arbitrarily choose who to love. We all have our likes, preferences etc, that may subconsciously determine who we grow to like, and consciously determine who we choose to love. We pick and choose who to like based on their personalities and character and how that blends with ours, but when we choose to do the work of loving them for life (and it is work), then you just do it. That being said - we are supposed to give 100/100 in a relationship. You should give 100 and so should your partner. But this is not always the case. Sometimes you are running on 40 and your partner is still on 100; sometimes they will be on 50 and you will be on 70. Basically it fluctuates a lot and during this fluctuation we "rely" on our partner to stay strong as we fuel up.

Yet herein lies the issue - the moment that you even notice there's a fluctuation, it probably means someone has been keeping score. And nothing will drain you of your fuel faster than keeping score. And I will be the first to admit that there are many times I find myself keeping score, and mostly when my love tank is running close to E.

Here's the thing - Human Beings are at their very core SELFISH. By nature. No one needs to teach you this. We are all about "what's in it for me". We walk into relationships with expectations, and if we are frank with ourselves, most of our expectations have to do with us individually - what my partner will do for ME. How our relationship will make ME feel. And this is just how we are built. Yet, this will always end up being the very basis of how we begin keeping score. We become unhappy because our partner isnt doing the things we expected them to do, or making us feel the way we expected them to make us feel.

After some time of feeling this way, the mature mind will begin to realize It shouldn't be about what you can get, but what you can give. I actually (honestly) received the most satisfaction and happiness in my relationship when i stopped expecting him to do things for me. Also, you have to be a great catch in order to get a great catch. Some people want to have their prince charming yet their soul's uglier than a garbage collection truck. You want a man/woman who can be all these amazing things to you and do all these amazing things for you, but what do you (yes, YOU) have to put on the table? If I'm doing all I can to ensure that your needs are met, and you are doing all you can to ensure my needs a met, what a happy world this would be :-)

Also, Worrying about "settling" will destroy your life. And lets face it, the fear of settling especially when trying to select a life partner, is one of the major cause of keeping score. Of course you know when you deserve better. There's those people you're with and you just know you deserve better. However it should be because you realize that who you are and how you understand love versus who they are and how they understand love just don't mix. And sometimes this is the reason why you feel like you're with a person who just isn't meeting your expectations. You want to love someone who you feel deserves your love (Ladies especially). You want to feel like they work for it, and you loving them is the reward for their work. And all this is because we are all afraid of "settling", settling being ending up with someone who we feel is not deserving of the love we have to give. But, the whole point of love is that we don’t deserve it. We are flawed human beings running around and making mistakes. We are, and will always be, imperfect. It’s not good or bad, that’s just the way things are. We don’t need to become perfect in order to love and be loved. No one needs to be good enough to be loved because the act of loving someone has nothing to do with this. Love has nothing to do with measuring up, we don’t sit around with a clipboard and start (or stop) loving someone based on how many good or bad acts and characteristics we can check off. Love is a gift, not a purchase.

The main reason I've taught myself to stop keeping score is that keeping Score will always leave you unsatisfied and unhappy. When you say “I will only love someone who gives me as much love as I give them” you are instituting a scoreboard, and once a relationship has a scoreboard you will never be happy with it again. Think about it — does it sound at all pleasurable to spend your relationship tallying the number of nice things you have done for them versus what they have done for you? Thinking in terms of “enough” is a poison to any relationship because nothing is ever enough or permanent enough to stop thinking about the scoreboard.

So challenge yourself to get rid of the scoreboard if at all you have one. And if you don't, I hope this helps you think twice before walking down that road. Remember - you would never understand what unconditional love is if the person you loved met all your conditions.