Stop Keeping Score in Your Marriage

One of the big problems a lot of young couples have in marriage is the deviation of chores. If you have a wife, that is not a traditional wife who takes care of the house this becomes even more pronounced. Now I’m not saying that women are the ones who keep score? No because men keep score too.

The fact that people are keeping score is where many of the fights come from. And this keeping score is keeping your relationship small. Keeping score in a relationship also separates and breaks down connection. This is because you’re too busy having hurt feelings and trying to balance the score, then trying to keep a marriage going.

So to not bury the lead, I’m gonna say right now stop keeping score. It’s not worth the fight. It’s not worth the headaches. And you are causing your own suffering in life because of the keeping of scores.

What is keeping score

No, you made me wondering what do you mean by keeping score? There’s no scoreboard set up in the kitchen on the refrigerator, so how are we keeping score?

Keeping score is often shown by the types of arguments that you have. Many times keeping score is created by the wife. Especially if she is staying home with the kids and is trying to run the house. When the husband gets home after a long day of slaying dragons, the insecure wife will show up and will ask him to do something. For instance, she may ask him to do the dishes tonight. The guy replies with well, I will get them tomorrow. The wife made them reply with, “Well, I did the dishes all this week and you haven’t done them once.” This is one of the examples of keeping score.

Now guys keeping score isn’t just a woman thing either. Many guys will keep score in the form of a covert contract. We will clean the bathroom, living room, dust the whole house, wash the dishes, clean out the refrigerator, take out the trash, mow the lawn, wash and wax each of the cars. At the end of the night, our wife shows up in three layers of clothes, Footy pajamas, and exfoliating mask she sets in bed, and plays on her phone before going to bed an hour later. The whole time you’re sitting there waiting for Sexy time. Then you get resentful because she turns the light off and goes to bed. Then a day or two later, you erupt in anger and express everything that you did and wanna know why y’all can’t have sex. That is also an example of keeping score.

Nice guys love to keep score

As mentioned before nice guys love their covert contracts. Because we are so afraid of being rejected. We bother don’t even bother telling our wife that we’ve set up this deal with her. We just expected to happen and we don’t.

Another example that we keep score is all those times we rub her back and we hear her explain that she will rub us tomorrow night and it doesn’t happen. This happens every week as you massage your back and you get nothing in return. That sounds like a logical reason to keep score, it’s not though.

Why keeping score leads to pain

Keeping score is one of the worst things couples do to sabotage their relationships. And there are many reasons as to why keeping scores does not work. Yeah, it sounds like a good idea. Yet the fact that it leads to fights and arguments and tears shows that it does not work for a Healthy relationship.

Neither of you are measuring the same way.

The number one reason why keeping score is not good for a couple is that nobody laid out the ground rules. One person may think dishes equals one point. While the other person may think dishes, washing the windows, vacuuming the floor, and doing the laundry is one point.

Many times women will talk about how we don’t help around the house. Yet the guys are the ones who are out in the yard mowing the lawn trimming back the hedges washing the cars fixing the broken banisters taking care of a lot of of the physical manual labor. Is mowing the lawn equal to washing the dishes? I don’t know is it for you?

This is the problem that I’m getting at. Keeping score doesn’t work because we don’t equate one to one. What one person thinks is worth one. The other person thinks it might be worth a five. And the reason why that happens is because we aren’t willing to talk about the problem.

We’re also not willing to hold each other accountable for what we’ve said.

I understand though what us men are afraid of. If we stand up and point, our wife that she promised last night that we’re gonna have sex, she may agree to go ahead and say all right let’s have sex, but she’s going to punish us with that sex by laying there being a wet dish rack. I get how that’s can be a frustrating portion Of a relationship. So we have to be able to communicate effectively with each other. Come to each other with the means of asking good questions and not run away from the circumstance that arises.

We’ve had those instances where women have held sexual intimacy as extortion. And I get how frustratingly hard that problem can be. But again, you have to be able to ask the questions and accept the response and understand that all the emotions that you have are just reactions to your thoughts. All your wife’s reactions are from her thoughts too.

It is a means of playing the victim

As with any fights keeping score and the resulting arguments are nothing more than a race to see who is the biggest victim in the party. Was it you or was it your wife? My thought is that it’s both of y’all because neither one of y’all were willing to actually talk about the problem before it blew up.

You’re screaming that you’re a bigger victim because you did more work than the other person. Is that really true? If you stretch everything out in a 24 hour day, what are you measuring work by? Is it by physical action? Is it by brain action? Is it by the number of tasks that you completed? If you work on 10 different tasks that don’t require much thought or much physical exertion. The other person does two tasks that require, tremendous thought and tremendous physicality, who won? If you’re racing to be the victim, both sides lose. You lose the opportunity to be the man of the house and she loses her husband.

How do you stop keeping score?

There are a few things you can do to stop keeping score. Biggest one is accepting that y’all both do work. May not be in what you think is the equal amount, but except that y’all do work. If you wanna divide these chores up, be my guest. But stop bitching about you having more than the other person. Your wife does a lot if she stays at home. Your wife does a lot if she goes out and works. You do a lot when you’re out of work. You do a lot when you’re staying home. We’re all doing stuff. It’s just what is the value that we’re applying to the work we complete?

So Man except the fact that your wife bust her butt if she is to stay at home mom. Does it look like she’s done a bunch? No, but that’s OK. That is not your realm of responsibility. Now if she is dedicated to making sure your house is a sanctuary of peace and harmony then she’ll take pride in that. If she doesn’t, that’s fine too.

Man, if you’re a stay at home, dad and your wife is complaining about you not doing enough around the house, that is just her thoughts. You can jump to the victim side or you can just accept that that’s how she looks at it if she wants to stay home and you go to work maybe that’s a suggestion you make. Or maybe just maybe you do the ultimate fixing of keeping points.

Stop taking score. If you catch one side or the other, trying to keep score gently remind them we don’t keep score. If they’re not doing something that makes makes you happy then you do whatever it is that’s need to be done to make you happy. Because your wife doing all the chores in the house so that you can come home and sit down in front of the television. Is it going to make you happy. It’s your thoughts about the circumstances. It’s your thoughts about how clean or dirty the house is that makes you happy or grumpy. It has nothing to do with the fact that you cleaned all the house and you didn’t ask the wife if you would get a reward for doing all that work. Next time ask her if you do all this work, can you get a blow job. If you do all this work, how about y’all have some sexy time together. If she says no then y’all get to talk about it. Ask questions and ask more questions and come to understand what it is that she is or is not agreeing to.

Relationships in marriage is one of those activities that takes a long time to Blossom into a beautiful relationship. It starts off great easy full passion, sex caring and then in the middle there’s a big old huge drop as y’all trying to figure out each other. Keeping score is one of the worst things you can do for your marriage. Don’t keep score. Understand why you want to keep score And then get rid of that thought. Come up with a better thought that allows. You’d be more caring to the circumstances. And you will find that things get better as you go.