Relationships
How to Win (or Lose) in a Relationship
Why do we keep score?
Posted March 9, 2022 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- It's not uncommon for people to keep score in relationships, even if it's unintentional.
- Many people like to compare the ways they are right to the ways their partner is wrong.
- Instead of seeing a relationship as a competition to be won, try looking at a partner as a teammate.
In therapy, it’s common to hear people in relationships talk about their interactions with their partners in terms of “keeping score.” This is the idea that we consider perceived slights or the neglect of our emotional needs as attacks against us as if an opponent is scoring points against us in a game. Our instinct is to respond to these perceived attacks with our own counterattacks in an effort to even the score.
Thinking about it objectively, we can see that this idea of keeping score isn’t going to help our relationship. In fact, we know that if we want a happy relationship, we should refrain from playing the game because if we win, it means our partner loses. However, in the heat of the moment, keeping score feels completely justified and indeed the right thing to do.
Competition in relationships
It can be very satisfying to let our partner know in ways both straightforward and indirect that we are right and they are wrong. That we can hurt them more than they hurt us. We do this in many ways, from big things (like pointing out in an unsupportive way how a career change hasn’t worked out for the best) to small things (like pointing out how they could have gotten a better parking spot). And we often do it without acknowledging we are doing it. This deeply seated need to keep score prevents us from having relationships that are as supportive and meaningful as they could be.
When we have a solid relationship base and feel like a united front against the trials and tribulations of life, we often think about ourselves as members of the same team. We’re in the trenches together; we’ve got each other’s backs. But when we keep score, we’re not on the same team anymore. Now we’re opponents. We’re turning our relationship into a competition where one person is always losing.
And how do we ultimately win in this particular game? We make the other person so aware of what they are doing wrong and how they are failing us in our relationship that we reach the point where they no longer want to be around us. The end goal of the game is to be so right that it eventually drives the other person away. And most importantly, it should happen in a way that makes it feel like it’s not our fault. That the other person made this happen. They made a choice to leave. Of course, the reason why is because we played the game so well. That’s the horrible irony of this game: By winning it, we ultimately lose.
How to stop keeping score
It can be difficult to break out of this mindset and stop looking at the scoreboard. To not even care what the score is. To not feel like a pushover who doesn’t mind losing. To stop living in the mindset of competition at all.
Of course, to get to this point, you have to accept that you are playing the game in the first place. Most people never get to the point where they realize this. They go from relationship to relationship, always winning the game but losing the war. So, the first step is awareness. The next step is to learn how not to play.
Imagine you’re a basketball player in a close game. You have the ball with a chance to take the lead with a last-second shot. It’s your time in the spotlight, your moment to shine. But instead, as the clock counts down, you simply hand the ball to an opposing player. The buzzer sounds; you’ve lost the game. The fans are furious. You didn’t even take a shot!
The way those fans would react is how your subconscious mind will react when your partner says something you take to be an attack on yourself, something that makes you feel ashamed or defensive, and you don’t come back with an equally mean reply. When you defer the choice about where to eat dinner to them, and then you go to the place, and it’s closed, and you don’t take the opportunity to needle them about it. When you accept what your emotional self considers to be an attack on yourself without retaliating. When you don’t take the shot. The voices in your head will yell and boo and demand you take that shot, but now you know that it’s not about winning the game. In fact, it’s not a game at all! The opponent you thought you were playing against is actually your teammate.
It’s hard to break this pattern, and like most things that are hard to do, it starts with small steps. The eventual change stems from the realization that we don’t have to point out when our partners do something wrong. That what you perceive to be an attack on you is not an attack at all. And in small moments, we can think about this and react in ways that are not defensive. We can let moments like this pass without reacting to them.
You will be pleasantly surprised by how much these incremental changes in your attitude will improve your relationship. Little things mean a lot. When situations that once were sure to turn into fights now pass by without conflict, that’s an improvement. So, learn to lose the game and win the war. Because, in the words of a famous 20th-century supercomputer, “The only winning move is not to play.”
