We’ve all been there: Maybe you have a friend you always text first to hang out. Or you feel like your partner doesn’t notice that you’re usually the one who plans date night. While all relationships ebb and flow, it’s only human to be aware of our own work and effort—and to compare it to others’. But while noticing these patterns can be normal, it can quickly become unhealthy when the care we put into a relationship is conditional to what we receive in return.
This is called “scorekeeping,” and it can be understood as “mentally tracking effort to figure out whether care and attention is being reciprocated,” Lisa Chen, LMFT, a Los Angeles-based couples therapist, tells SELF. Whether you’re comparing how often you do the dishes, who apologies first after a fight, or even who initiates sex more, scorekeeping can come up in all sorts of ways. Noticing these patterns might not be inherently harmful to a relationship. But when “consideration and kindness become a litmus test rather than an expression of care,” Chen says, “the relationship may start to feel transactional instead of relational.”
Sound familiar? You might be wondering what the scorekeeping in your relationship says about you. Here are a few things to consider.
Why do we feel the need to keep score in the first place?
Keeping score can feel self-protective. Relationships open us up to our own vulnerabilities, and it can be easier to stay vigilant for potential hurt down the line than to name a deeper fear of being unseen. “If early relationships with caregivers had praise, attention, or safety that depended on performance, compliance, or sacrifice, this can create the same dynamic in adult relationships,” says relationship therapist Rachel Wright, MA, LMFT.
We all want to feel loved and special. And while sometimes keeping score can reveal one-sidedness in relationships, more often it “becomes a way to create proof that something is off or wrong—especially in relationships where effort feels uneven over time,” Wright tells SELF.
While your mind uses scorekeeping to prove that your partner is the “bad guy,” it can also show you the parts of a relationship where you might already feel vulnerable to being unimportant. Some of us might find ourselves keeping score over tangible actions, like doing chores. Others might find mental tallying come up more around emotional labor. Scorekeeping can show us the areas in our relationships where we put in significant effort or “where we might be especially sensitive to feeling desired or special,” Chen says.
