Keeping score pollutes your relationship
How do you keep score in your relationship?
- Do you give yourself a tally mark when you clean the kitchen?
- Do you dock your spouse when they don’t?
- Do you count the times you’ve had sex then wait because this time it’s your spouse’s turn to initiate?
When you keep score, it hurts your marriage communication. Keeping score turns love into a commodity that has to be earned. Love feels best when it is freely given.
In this episode:
- You’ll hear a story about earned love vs love that’s freely given and why keeping score in your marriage also keeps love out of reach.
- You’ll get a laughter challenge
- And I’ll introduce a new segment–Begin Again–and ask for your participation.
A Story About How Your Body Feels When You Keep Score
I tell a story about keeping score in my marriage. I can feel my tight lips chew on the score, keeping tally marks in the correct column.
My husband isn’t so much a score keeper and he doesn’t notice that I’m keeping tally as he does or doesn’t clean the kitchen.
I often “win” when it comes to the tally marks, but I don’t feel like a winner. I feel tight. My throat, my tongue, even my cheeks are filled with dozens of invisible knots.
What I feel is loss.
Habit for Your Happily Ever After
Make the “game” of keeping score a REAL GAME that makes each of you laugh. It needs to feel fun for both of you. That’s what will allow your relationship to win.
Try this:
Announce the game’s start time. For the next month, let’s see who does the most dishes. Winner takes a week off from dish-duty.
Try this:
Create a challenge. Let’s see how many weeks in a row—without missing a week—we can do something that resembles a date.
Try this:
Write new rules. Could we agree that it’s vulnerable to initiate sex, so we want to reward the brave person by whole-heartedly participating? Not just participate grudgingly.
While you’re developing habits for your happily ever after, consider taking my class, Marriage 101.
Something Else: Communication Breakdowns and Breakthroughs
You can hear the communication breakdown in my marriage in today’s episode.
Now I want to hear form you. What communication breakdowns have you had? How were you able to turn the breakdown into a breakthrough?
Because my podcast is new, I don’t have a guest for this segment today. But if you have a story to share, please text me at 970-210-4480 or connect with me here.
Date Night Discussion
- Laugh when you’re around your spouse.
- Laugh inside your marriage.
What makes you laugh? Laughter is contagious. Laughter banishes score-keeping. Laughter invites intimacy in your marriage.
If you’re struggling to laugh, watch this video of the laughing yogi.
Take the discussion deeper
Laughter is contagious. The more you practice it, the more often–and easily–you’ll laugh.
Tell your spouse a story from your childhood when you got the giggles and couldn’t stop laughing.
Laughter is the antidote to keeping score. Laughter says I love you and delight in you right now. It feels like love that is given freely.
Score-keeping, on the other hand, sends a message that love must be earned. Earned love makes us feel insecure, and it’s deadly to your relationship.
It’s hard to stop keeping score, but all that score-keeping is hiding your joy. So make your score-keeping transparent and laugh at how ridiculous it is.
Want to stop arguing and start connecting with your spouse? This FREE e-course will offer you habits to improve your marriage communication so you can smile more and fight less. Sign up to improve marriage communication.
