‘This reminds me of an episode of How I met Your Mother’ – Mrs V on more than one occasion.
You could replace How I met Your Mother with Seinfeld or Friends, but the principle is the same, a lot of life’s situations are often reflected in the humour of long running comedy shows. In this case I’m thinking of the episode ‘Drunk Train’ in which Lily and Marshall tell the group the key to a successful relationship is not keeping score.
Normally I wouldn’t expect to say advice from a series that has taken nearly a decade to introduce the key concept of the show is actually worth listening to, but in this case it’s pretty solid. It’s hard work holding a grudge (I should know) and you can’t let others indiscretions and mistakes eat away at you. Especially for someone as perfect as I am, I can’t expect others to continually be at the high standards I hold for myself can I?
In case Mrs V is reading, you have to forgive me for that. No scores.
It helps to not tally up the mistakes or keep a credit of goodness, you shouldn’t live your life based on the balance of previous events. If you want a final score then wait for Osiris to weigh up your life against the feather of Ma’at. Hopefully you won’t be eaten by Amenti by your past errors.
But in a relationship there is no golden balance, there will be times when one falls and the other has to pick up the slack, there are those moments when you are done wrong and occasions when you wish you had been made a cup of tea but you didn’t get one. Just because your significant other didn’t make you a cup of tea when they said they would and then didn’t doesn’t mean you should hold it against them even when they make you a cup of tea.
I would also hate for you to think that I was just writing that paragraph so that when a certain someone reads it they will turn to me and go ‘ahem, are you angling for a cup of tea’.
Mrs V takes five out of seven nights to stay up with the baby, but I washed the towels and sheets and did breakfast this morning. It doesn’t mean that we are even just that we do things that need to be done without making a claim that we are ‘owed’ something. I can’t trade taking her to the Post Office to send cards to America for an afternoon on the Xbox, I do the first because I love her and the feeling is reciprocated.
We had this discussion about the movies we see, that I will go see the films she likes and in return she’ll she awesome movies like Pacific Rim. We don’t judge each others choices because they are that ‘the other person’s choices’ and what right do we have to dismiss the things they like?
You can either forgive the other person, or forget having a relationship with them.
Viva Ergo Sum 