True service can only be accomplished from a position of unpretentious humility and love. If a person feels angry and does something to benefit the other party, it's not actually to benefit the other party but themselves. If a person renders a beneficial act to another from a position of condescension, it's not service nor love but pity.
True love therefore is bred by true service. True service is not a thing to be tallied. It's not a contest of high scores and rivalries. It's a river that flows from your heart, buoying your partner up and carrying them to a sea of bliss.
You may assume that the reason service is the secret is because your efforts will endear you in your partner's eyes, but that's only a sliver of the reason. Most people, referring to the first paragraph, forget to return gratitude for nice acts, especially when acts of kindness are commonplace. No, what service does is it endears you to your partner.
It's all about investment. The time that you spend with a partner is an investment, but even more important is the quality of the time. When the time you spend with them is consumed by transient cares or even brooding over areas in which you think they're lacking, that's like investing your money in fireworks. It's no surprise when it ends in flames. When your time with your partner is spent serving and building them up, that's like investing in a house. You expect many long, comfortable years with it.
Of course, you see the relationships where one person is making payments on a house while the other is building up their fireworks stockpile. Eventually the second person lights off their investment and burns the house to the ground. Make sure you don't miss the signs if your partner doesn't care about investing in you as much as you do in them.
In the end, that's the goal. You need to find someone who's willing to invest as much in you as you are in them. And that amount should be 100%.
Partner co-investments in a relationship are rarely equal at any given time. For a variety of reasons, one partner is often investing more at the moment. I would say that in most healthy peer relationships the investments more or less even out over time. But, as you said, it's not about keeping score. It's about both partners contributing what they can in ways that foster a viable relationship.
ReplyDeleteI know a woman that consecrated pretty much everything she had to the care of her husband during his last 12 years of life as Alzheimer's slowly overtook and incapacitated him to the point that he no longer had capacity to consciously invest anything at all. Yet the relationship remained viable. There were times that the challenges involved nearly broke this lady, but today she is happy for the sacrifices she made.