My dear Jil, it’s really very simple when you think of it. What you want in a relationship you must be prepared to give. If you want devotion, give devotion. If you want affection, give affection. If you want care, give care. What you want, give! Seems so simple, doesn’t it? These are simple rules of relationship and happiness. If you check out fantastic marriages, you’ll see these rules being applied. And they don’t seem like work because love is present.
You pay things forward in a relationship if you want happiness. You give first, you don’t wait to collect and then consider giving. Once you enter that mode the relationship goes transactional. Doing good to your partner then becomes no tit no tat. And the whole thing grows worse when you don’t want to give but expect to collect. And worst when you then want to control the other party. That smacks of all sorts of character trait that are antithetical to relationship. In essence, you’re being smart. You keep what you have but expect to collect from the other party. Very selfish. It’s not just selfishness, it’s stinginess as well.
Sooner or later your partner will get the message and wisen up. Those who do these things tend to have a sense of entitlement. They EXPECT to be given, they’re blind to the duty of giving. Never giving, always expectant. That’s poverty of spirit. But that disposition negatively impacts so many things in a relationship. It naturally abhors taking initiative of care. And so the relationship becomes a one-way traffic of affection – only one party giving, no reciprocity or giving of any sort from the other party. This greatly impacts on the quality of relationship and in time someone begins to feel being taken for a fool. The aggrieved party soon pulls back. He becomes quietly angry and feels short-changed.
Stinginess in a relationship is not always about material gifts. It can be something as simple as a text. If he texts and you ignore his text you can’t complain if you text and he ignores your text. It’s called responsorial reciprocity. Surely, if you like to ignore people’s texts, you must be able to handle your texts being ignored! One rule can’t apply to your partner and another to you. There must be egalitarianism of responsibilities in a relationship. You can’t be affection-dry and ungiving yet be expecting affection. You won’t have a successful relationship. There are other expressions of this principle. Think of something as simple as duty of care, for example someone checking up on you. If you care about someone and you don’t hear from him, duty of care demands you find out what’s wrong. But lack of care and selfishness says, “I’m not going to call him to find out what’s wrong; I want him to want me more than I want him.” If something is genuinely wrong, say he’s ill, the guy will of course find such attitude painful. And the seed of termination of that relationship is sown. It begins to incubate in the heart. Every other thing that happens thereafter becomes reinforcement and confirmation of that awful impression of selfishness. And when one day he decides to pull out of the relationship, you’ll wonder why he’d do that over a trifle. But it’s not the trifle that precipitated the breakup, it was the grain of sand that caused a sand avalanche. In other words, it wasn’t the immediate event that led to that break up; it’s your character. When your friends ask you what happened you’ll of course be perplexed. That’s because you’re used to people giving you forbearance. Your friends will of course then start blaming the guy. But they ignore the fact of your character.
A relationship made up of one-way expectations is a parasitic relationship. A parasitic relationship wants, never expects giving and has a sense of entitlement. It’s incredibly emotionally draining. There’s material stinginess but there’s also emotional stinginess. Both outrightly destroy a relationship, prevent it from attaining its full potential. It cannot maximise its possibilities. Something as mundane as going to the movies can be used to demonstrate generosity of heart to your partner. Why don’t you one of these days offer to take him out rather than always expecting him to take you out as if it’s some duty. I’m not saying he shouldn’t try and be a man. But even men want to be taken out once in a while. It’s a good gesture. A relationship can’t be a one-way in configuration. It will have traffic issues. The danger of being selfish in a relationship is that you make room for the possibility of a generous alternative to you. At some point, the man will ask himself what exactly he’s gaining from the relationship. Stinginess makes a man ask such questions eventually.
The world recommends emotional and material stinginess as the best way to manage a relationship but they destroy relationships. Even outside of relationship, stingy people lose a lot. The sad thing is they’ll never realise how much. But it’s quite a lot. In a relationship a stingy person is seen as extractor. And he or she is like a heavy cloud without rain. There’s that expectation of reciprocity of affection in a relationship. Stinginess introduces manipulation into a relationship. Everything becomes deliberate, robbing the relationship of honest affection. You won’t have the kind of relationship you want being stingy to your partner. You won’t get the marriage you want. And stinginess blinds us to ourselves. Our vision becomes stingy to us. We can’t see much. Everything we see is about us and us. By the way stinginess, manipulation and stubbornness are triplets. They tend to go together, occupy same person. Stinginess – emotional or material, is antithetical to healthy relationship. If you’re not ready to give, you can’t have a fulfilling successful marriage or relationship. The very notion of love is giving and sacrifice. That’s what it’s all about. And when partners are committed to being generous to each other – be it materially or emotionally, the relationship is solidified. But if all you’re thinking is how to extract from your partner and not give, the relationship soon becomes a tiresome undertaking. And the quantum of giving must be the same even if quantity cannot be. Just give your best in your relationship. It’s emotionally draining to have a partner constantly expecting and not giving. It drags the spirit down. Re-conceptualise your philosophy of relationship. If you don’t you’ll lose this guy. There’s a limit to the excuses a man can give himself about a partner’s stingy disposition. He’s soon forced to come to terms with reality.
Your mentor, LA
© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com
If you’re not ready to give, you can’t have a fulfilling successful marriage or relationship. Click To Tweet