Love is Give and Take

The balance of give and take in a relationship is a very delicate thing.  If we think of our spouse as being there for us, we can easily forget the fact that we are there for each other. I remember a mother of five young ones who had the opportunity to teach a one-hour class once a week for six weeks.  She told her husband about it and he was very supportive, “Sure, you can do it, just as long as it doesn’t interfere with your responsibilities at home.”  She didn’t accept the opportunity, because it would interfere with her responsibilities at home and he wasn’t willing to step up and help her.  The man who cries, “You never support me!”  when his wife mentions that he’s hardly ever home, needs to look at the balance of give and take in the relationship and see that his choice to take on double shifts for months on end is requiring her support of him but also extremely limiting the support he can give to her.  The wife who leaves to finish her education while there are yet small children in the home, needs to consider if this is really the appropriate time to ask for the kind of support this will require of her husband.  Emergency situations which require an imbalance are one thing, but a decision to over-extend yourself should never be made unilaterally, especially if it is for an extended period of time and severely impacts your partner.  The specifics should be discussed and agreed upon, be re-evaluated frequently, and the partner who will be doing the taking needs to be even more conscious of ways to ease the burden he has required the other to carry.