A relationship is not a game and therefore whenever you try to keep score in a relationship about who is the winner and who has won the argument, who contributes more etc will only lead to bad things.
However, before we move on with the topic of whether keeping score in a relationship is helpful or healthy or bad, let us actually find out what is the meaning of keeping score in a relationship.
WHAT IS KEEPING SCORE IN A RELATIONSHIP
Score keeping in a relationship is basically counting everything and anything that you do in a relationship.
Scorekeeping can be keeping count of how much you contribute to your house and what are the different kinds of work you do in the house.
Score keeping can be how many arguments you are winning in the relationship and score keeping can also mean who spends more in a relationship.
Score keeping is basically counting everything and anything in a relationship as if it was a bank account or a computer game.
Score keeping is good in life and career but it is never a good thing in a relationship because when you are in a relationship with someone your life is basically attached to that person.
When you bring score keeping in between that means you are subconsciously recognising that you and your partner and not one and the same and this brings division and distance.
Score keeping in a relationship is a very toxic trait and it can digress into something even worse.
Now that we know what is keeping score in a relationship, let us find out why it is actually bad to keep track in a relationship.
HERE IS WHY KEEPING TRACK IN A RELATIONSHIP IS BAD
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FLAWED SCORING SYSTEM
One of the biggest problems that you must understand is that you are trying to keep score in a relationship and not a football match and that is probably the most important thing.
A relationship is subjective and your wants and needs and sacrifices are subjective and that is why it is very difficult if not impossible to put a solid number or score.
There might be things that you do for your partner that you count and there might be things that your partner does for you but it is totally unnoticed to you.
This is precisely the reason why you should not keep score in a relationship because that will mean that you do not trust your significant other to be fair with you.
When you try to keep a score, it means that the score is more important than anything else which can be true in the case of a sporting event.
However, a relationship is not a sporting event. There are sacrifices that you do for your partner that you can never put a score on and their things that your partner does for you that you can never count.
Because you cannot compare apples to oranges and that is why the scoring system is very flawed when it comes to a relationship.
The only solution to this is to simply do as much as you can for your partner and not expect anything in return.
If you truly have a good person in your life then you will surely receive the same or even more in your relationship.
However, if you find yourself in an unhappy marriage then the best thing to do would be to wrap things up with your partner.
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NOT YOUR OPPONENT
Life is all about competition and wherever you go and whatever you do will be judged in a way of competition and a rat race.
However, there is only one place where you are not in competition with the other person and that is in a relationship.
You might be in a competition in your job and you might even be in a competition with your sibling but you are not in a competition with your partner.
You have nothing to win here simply because you might win the battle but you might lose the war and this war is your relationship.
You must keep in mind that whenever you are trying to keep score in a relationship, you are also trying to make sure that there is a sense of competition.
And whenever there is a sense of competition, the other person is your opponent and it might not take a lot of time for this opponent to change into an enemy.
That is exactly how relationships become toxic because partners always try to calculate how much they are contributing to the relationship and how much they are receiving in the relationship.
It is something impossible to calculate because love is the biggest equation that you must think about and nothing else.
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IMPOSSIBLE TO TRACK EVERYTHING
We have mentioned parts of this in the first point and we are going to explain this in detail in this point because we are talking about how flawed the calculation of keeping score in a relationship is.
You can keep track of something that can be calculated, you can count apples but you cannot count water and that is exactly what a relationship is.
It is impossible to count the sacrifices that you make in a relationship and it is impossible to compare them to the sacrifices that your partner makes in the relationship.
There might be things that your partner did for you that you might have never noticed and you might probably never know.
And there are obviously things that you did for your partner that they are never going to know but the important thing is that you did those things because you care about your partner.
Perhaps your partner was finding it difficult to sleep and you used your hand as a pillow for their head to rest on and perhaps you were finding it too cold to sleep in the room and so your partner turned up the heat even if it was uncomfortable for them.
A relationship is nothing but selfless acts of love which can and should not be counted.
We hope this blog has been helpful to you in order to understand why keeping a score in a relationship is always a bad idea and why you should never do it.