The Relationship Contract Nobody Signed
“When you text me, I answer. I make whatever you need a priority. And then when I need something from you, I’m waiting.”
“But I never asked you to answer me immediately.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
We do this all the time in relationships. We take the way we naturally love and turn it into an agreement nobody else remembers making.
I would have called. I would have known that you needed me. There is usually an accusation hiding somewhere inside the sentence. If I would do this for you and you wouldn’t do it for me, then I must care more. Something is unfair.
But “I would have done it for you” tells me first about me. It tells me how I tend to love, what I pay attention to, and what I value. Somewhere along the way, that information about me becomes an expectation of you.
I do this for you, so you should do it for me. Nobody signed that contract. Most of us do not even realize we are carrying it. We assume other people will love us the way we love because our own way of loving feels so obvious. If I love someone, I check in. If I love someone, I make myself available. Whatever our particular version is, it rarely feels like a preference. It feels like what love is.
So when our partner does something different, we give the difference meaning. I would never leave you alone with that. Why am I the one who remembers everything?
Resentment can expose something about our giving.
I once worked with someone who was furious that her partner rarely rearranged his plans for her. She did it all the time for him. If he needed something, she moved things around. She made it work. It seemed obvious to her that he should do the same.
Eventually, a different question came up: Did she actually want to be rearranging her life this much? She didn’t. She had been doing something she did not particularly want to do and using her willingness to do it as the standard her partner was failing to meet. Sometimes the resentment underneath “I do so much for you” is asking us to look at how much we are choosing to do. Maybe I do not need you to sacrifice more. Maybe I need to sacrifice less.
The things we so generously give may not even be the things our partners most want. We tend to give people what makes us feel loved. For one person, love may mean being accompanied. Come with me. Pay attention to what is happening with me.
Her partner may experience love through freedom. Trust me. Give me room. She gives him attention because attention feels loving to her. He gives her space because space feels loving to him. Then each wonders why the other keeps getting it wrong. They may be offering each other something the other person does not particularly need while waiting for something neither has clearly asked for.
We can spend years faithfully fulfilling our half of an agreement that exists only in our own head, then feel betrayed when the other person fails to fulfill theirs. Perhaps some of what I am waiting for is something you would never have known I needed.
At some point, we have to stop assuming and ask: What actually makes you feel loved? What do I keep giving you that matters hugely to me but perhaps not much to you? What am I doing out of obligation, hoping you will eventually do the same for me? What do I need that I want to ask you for directly?
This is where an actual contract can begin. It may turn out that I need more attention than you naturally give. You may need more freedom than I naturally offer. Loving each other then requires some movement. I have to learn that giving you space is not abandoning you. You have to understand that coming toward me is not surrendering your autonomy. Then we have to decide what we are willing and able to give.
There are relationships where that conversation exposes a real problem. One person asks clearly for something important, and the other repeatedly cannot or will not provide it. Different ways of loving cannot explain everything. But we cannot know what kind of problem we have while we are measuring each other against ourselves.
