How to Stop Keeping Score with Your Spouse
Do you find yourself keeping score with your spouse? Or constantly comparing how much you do to how much he does?
It’s easy to do when you’re tired, stressed, and feeling like you’re doing more than you want to be. But keeping score creates anger and resentment and probably isn’t how you truly want to show up at home or with your family.
Here are 4 ideas for how to break out of the bad habit of keeping score so you can feel better about the work that both you and your spouse do to take care of your home and family.
Last week in a coaching session with one of my clients, we were talking about sharing responsibilities evenly with your spouse or partner.
We're with our families all of the time right now and for a lot of us there's no extra help so there's no break. There are no babysitters and no grandparents in a lot of cases and so we are all doing it all. And it's tiring. I know, I get it. I am right there with you.
But this client was feeling so angry lately with her husband. And when I asked her why she said,
“Because I'm doing more.”
And that is what I call keeping score. It’s keeping count as we go throughout our days of what your partner is doing versus what you are doing.
If you're doing the dishes or laundry or some other chore around the house and you happen to look over and catch your partner scrolling on his phone or watching TV or just generally not being productive, it's so easy to think that it’s not fair.
You’re tired, and you’re still doing work, and it’s not fair.
But tell me, how does that feel? How do you act toward him, toward your kids, or just in general when you're constantly thinking about fairness?
For her, she felt angry and bitter. There was a lot of stomping around, being short or impatient with the kids, even muttering some choice comments under her breath.
And if you've been thinking like this for a while, keeping score has probably become a habit, a comfortable thought, a place that you go when you’re tired and you feel like you're doing a lot.
So what do you do? How do you move past that constant comparison? Here are 4 tips for you:
1. Are these facts? Is it actually not fair or even?
In the book Drop the Ball, the author shares a story about the time she created an Excel spreadsheet of all of the household tasks, responsibilities, chores, etc. - what I call household operations. She put either her name or her husband’s name next to each of the tasks. Then she went to him to have a conversation about more evenly dividing things (which he was open to) and he took the list and promptly started adding all of these other tasks and responsibilities next to his name. She hadn’t even realized that these were things he did because he just takes care of them. He just does them. After he was finished, the spreadsheet was much more balanced than when she initially came to the conversation.
So for you, maybe you don't have to create a detailed spreadsheet, but just try to think about all of the things that your partner does do. And then revisit the fairness scale. Is it really that unfair? Or are there things that he does that offset what you do?
2. Put yourself in his shoes
This past weekend, I mowed the lawn. This is not something I normally, ok ever, do. It's just something that my husband takes care of. But he was working on a project it was going to rain in the afternoon and I thought, you know what? I can take care of this. Now, I’ll admit that throughout the summer when he's out mowing the lawn, it looks to me like an easy chore. You know, just push the mower around our modest urban yard. Well, this gave me a new appreciation for that chore. It was hard work! It took me at least an hour to get our yard mowed and I was exhausted.
So I said to him, “I will gladly do the laundry or another chore if you can just continue taking care of the yard.” So, put yourself in his shoes, maybe try out one of the chores that he always does, or trade with each other. Why not experiment? And if nothing else, you'll have a new appreciation for the work that you each do.
3. Ask
You might be thinking, duh Katelyn! But I’m telling you, it's hard. It's especially hard to ask without making the other person feel like you're attacking them. When I encourage my clients to ask for some help, I want them to ask not because things should be fair or even, because when are things in perfect balance. But instead, ask from a place of wanting support. Say I need some help. And then explain why. Not that you have to justify asking, but to help the other person really understand how they're helping you and to feel compelled to follow through. So maybe you’re asking for help because you need a break, because you're burned out, because you need some extra time to do something that’s really important to you, or because you want your kids to see an equal partnership.
Why does this matter to you? Why do you want to help? It's usually not just about fairness. It's usually something more. Is it that you want acknowledgment for all that you're doing? That's okay and it’s also okay to ask for that.
4. Do it or let it go
At the end of the day, I want to remind you that you can't control another adult. As much as we want to, we are all adults and we make our own choices. You can ask. You can set boundaries around your own time. You can try to divide things up as evenly as you can. But if something is important to you, just do it. And on the flip side, if it's not important to you, let it go. There's freedom and power in taking ownership and responsibility for what you want. To say, yes, I want these things done so I'm going to do them as opposed waiting for you to want to do them and complaining about things not being even. If you want it done, don’t wait for someone else. Do it, or let it go.
So, I would love to know, do you keep score? And if so, how is that going for you?
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