With everything given something is owed.
With everything given something, not the same thing, is owed.
With everything given—a kindness, one’s time, efforts on your behalf—you owe that person.
I write it three times because most people DON’T GET IT, or worse, refuse to believe it. It’s easier to receive than reciprocate. Denying or ignoring reciprocity doesn’t make the debt disappear; it undermines the relationship.
Just got off the phone with a friend. After describing my husband’s failure in planning our recent trip, I added he ‘owed me’ for 23 years planning unique family vacations every year.
My friend retorted, “I hate that. You don’t ‘owe’ your partner.”
Yes. You do!
With everything given something is owed.If not equitably, the perceived partnership is really a dictatorship.
Gray divorce is trending because the wife spent the last 20+ yrs of her life raising the kids, cleaning the house, shopping and cooking the meals for the family while working full-time, and she’s done being the unpaid labor force for a man who never learned to reciprocate.
Like it or not, mutually beneficial, fulfilling relationships are reciprocal.
Reciprocity goes beyond just marriage.
If your adult child has spent 20+ years being volatile, demanding, emotionally abusive, you may ‘love’ them, but it’s also likely you’re tolerating them.
Relationships without reciprocity become endurance.
With everything given, something is owed. If this paradigm is not understood, and PRACTICED in relationships, resentment festers, and corrodes over time. The union becomes fragile with the [often unspoken, or consciously recognized] weight of hostility, leading to divorce, estrangement from family, ending friendships, even work relationships.
I told my friend I spent three months every year planning our vacations on a shoestring budget. Countless times over the last 29 yrs I’d asked him to plan a romantic getaway for us, but he did only once—this recent trip, which I instigated, and reminded him to plan for over a year.
With everything given, something is owed. Something is owed, but not [necessarily] the same thing. Reciprocity need not be identical, but must be proportional to achieve equity in relationships. And true intimacy—sharing open communication, connection, trust—requires equity. Had my husband invested the same amount of time and focused energy as I do planning our trips, we likely wouldn’t have ended up on Hawaii in a cramped, shoddy, bug-infested Airbnb above a bar. (No resentment there…)
My parents’ marriage of 49 yrs was not reciprocal. It was a hierarchy.
I never heard my mom say a bad word about my dad until two weeks before she passed. Dying of cancer, she lay on her side of their California King spewing her bottled rage towards her misogynistic narcissist of a husband.
My dad was ‘king of his castle,’ but my mother paid the bills, did the taxes, and worked full-time while raising three kids. She planned the vacations, threw the parties, purchased the presents, hosted holidays, shopped and cooked most meals, even did much of the clean-up. She attended his business functions and soirées—‘his arm piece wearing the requisite sunshiny face,’ she’d said during her hate-filled rant.
My dad went to work and was home for dinner most nights. After he ate the meal we served him, he went into his office and watched TV, or read. Oh, and in a grand display, he carved the turkey my mom bought, cooked and served at Thanksgivings.
He left her lonely ‘doing his own thing’ in his free time during his working years, and in retirement. She gravitated to her network of friends (as so many married women do!) who extended their Time to her, as she did to them. They spoke often, met up for meals weekly, traveled together on vacations to far away places— leaving my father lonely too.
Ultimately, neglecting to invest the time and energy my mom had into him served neither of them.
Reciprocity isn’t complicated. It’s recognizing the amount of Time others invest in you—directly, through their time and attention; and indirectly by making your life easier.
It may be as simple as your timely response to a text or email from a friend or family member (since no one likes to wait for a reply).
A child’s reciprocity for a parent’s investment in them may be demonstrating respect, gratitude, cooperation, affection over time.
Husband/wife, parent/child, siblings, friends, associates, practicing Time for Time builds trust, connections, can even repair broken relationships. When we give our time—our most valued possession—we show we care.
Invest your Time in preserving, even strengthening any partnership by taking the following steps (in order!):
- We are a TEAM.*
- What does my partner need/want?
- What do I need/want?
- Compromise.
*Steps 2 – 4 can be more easily achieved by remembering #1.
With everything given, something is owed. Not the same thing, but something, in equal measure. This is the price of obtaining, and maintaining connections, friendships, love.
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