"I'll just put one more charge on the negative balance of the credit card of my marriage"

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The husband of one of my clients just left her and they are getting a divorce.

She feels betrayed after all the effort she made, all the sacrifices she suffered, all the times she was trying but he wasn’t, all the times she wanted to leave him but held onto hope and "commitment" anyway.

We humans consistently jeopardize the quality of our relationships—romantic or otherwise, by borrowing from the future.

 

 

Testing to check if you're running up the credit card on your relationship (with accruing interest)

If you cannot honestly say to yourself, “If this relationship ended tomorrow, I would be truly grateful
for the love and friendship I’ve had with them,” then your relationship is already well on its way to bankruptcy.

 

 

How do we unconsciously keep running up the balance

How do we get ourselves into this mire of debt where we feel that our partner owes us something or must change for us or our partner feels that we owe them something or must change for them?

Answer: by not choosing the courage on an hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis to make sure that we are satisfied with our boundaries, and satisfied with our trades (give and take) while keeping things complete, with no debts built up either way.

You are never doing yourself or your partner any favor by having them owe you. And, conversely, they are never doing you a favor by having you owe them.

 

 

How to ensure the negative balance never accumulates

A relationship only works well when both sides insist on arrangements such that the selfishness (self-interest) of one dovetails with the selfishness of the other. The partnership conversation is a great tool whenever it occurs that there may be a problem with this.

If, for whatever reason(s), such negotiations/arrangements are not made so that both sides are consistently satisfied, then the opportunity for courage is usually available to create a partial or total separation. To do otherwise is to perpetuate a lose-lose relationship.

 

 

Never "choose" the worst choice of toleration and "being the good guy"

Take a look at each of your important relationships. Looking at each one separately, asking yourself the question, “If, by an act of god, my relationship with this person ended tomorrow, would I be grateful for what I had with them?”

If the answer is “no,” then choose the courage to clean up the relationship or choose the courage to end it.

 

"Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy—the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation."

—Eric Hoffer (1902-1983, American author and philosopher)

"Today must not borrow from tomorrow."

—German proverb

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing."

—Anaïs Nin (1903-1977, French-born American novelist, dancer)