Let's not ask for what we refuse to offer

An expectation becomes unfair when it demands of our partner a standard that we ourselves refuse to meet.

We can expect respect, fidelity when it has been promised, listening, presence, tenderness, truth and a real willingness to build. The problem does not begin with the expectation.

It begins when we turn our expectations into duties for our partner and our own duties into options.

We arrive with a whole string of expectations

We want to be reassured, chosen, desired, listened to, protected, supported and understood. We hope our partner will know how to make us laugh when we are sad, encourage us when we doubt and remind us of our worth when we forget it.

Taken separately, many of these desires are legitimate.

Together, they can become an impossible mission. We place them in our partner's hands as if entering our life meant agreeing to administer all our happiness, to repair what others have broken and to understand what we do not know how to explain.

While we are counting what our partner should do, one question disappears: what was he hoping for, too, in building with us?

Our partner was not recruited to complete us

A partner can enrich our happiness, lighten a sorrow and create with us an environment where joy becomes more accessible.

But he has his own inner world: expectations, tiredness, projects and a particular way of feeling loved.

We can demand romantic gestures while he is waiting for us to finally take seriously a burden he carries alone. We can ask for more availability while what he most wants is to feel that his word counts in the decisions.

A couple does not put a provider face to face with a beneficiary. It brings together two people who must learn what has value for each of them and decide what they really want to build.

Our rights in love also question our duties

Dignity is not earned. Safety, consent and the right not to be humiliated are never reserved for perfect partners.

Beyond that foundation, investments must circulate.

If we ask to be listened to, what place do we give to our partner's words? If we want our dreams to be supported, how do we welcome his? If we demand that he correct what hurts us, what do we do with the behaviours he has been pointing out to us for months?

A serious expectation obliges us to look at the relationship in which we are asking our partner to fulfil it.

"I wouldn't have done it" can become a confession

This sentence looks like recognition: "Everything you have done for me, I would never have done."

It can touch the one who felt invisible. But if nothing changes afterwards, it ends up saying: "I see that you are offering me a level of love that I refuse to offer you, and I would like to keep benefiting from it."

Recognising a sacrifice is not enough to honour it.

We do not need to repay to the last penny. We must seek what important value we can bring in our turn, so that our partner's love does not become a resource that we admire while consuming it.

The source runs dry before the flow stops

A repeated effort becomes the backdrop: the coffee arrives, the bills are anticipated, the appointments are organised, the reassuring messages are sent.

Since the value is still arriving, we assume the source is full.

Yet it can continue out of love, habit, responsibility, hope or fear of disappointing while it is already exhausting itself. Its work becomes visible only when the flow decreases.

We then say: "You have changed."

Before inventing a hidden fault, let us look at the trajectory. Had this person announced that she could no longer carry this level of investment alone? What we call a change in love is sometimes a decision to preserve oneself.

Reciprocity does not copy the gesture

Returning value does not mean reproducing exactly what we have received.

If a morning kiss makes us feel chosen, our partner does not necessarily need the same kiss to receive the same attention. Perhaps a coffee prepared without being asked will tell him better: "I thought about your tiredness and I know your rhythm."

The coffee does not resemble the kiss. Yet the value circulates.

Reciprocity asks less: "Did I give back the same thing?" than: "Is our partner also receiving something that really counts in his eyes?"

The dish was not just a dish

I remember a sister I love very much. She had heard me speak several times about a dish that my grandmother, who died a few years earlier, used to make.

One day, she asked someone to cook it and had it delivered to me.

I was as happy as a child. That plate contained more than a meal. It contained my grandmother, a memory, an acknowledged absence and the proof that a small sentence had not disappeared in the noise of conversations.

My sister was not reproducing what I might have done for her. She was bringing another form, but that form had immense value for me.

Intelligent reciprocity seeks that particular door through which its love can enter our partner.

Reciprocity seeks an equivalent value, not an identical gesture

If we offer what we like to receive, we can be generous while missing our partner. Reciprocity requires knowing his way of experiencing good, not only reproducing our own.

Let us imagine that we love public surprises, while our partner feels more considered by a discreet presence. Preparing a big scene for him may serve our idea of love more than his experience. We can learn what touches him without waiting for him to adopt our tastes.

This adaptation does not mean erasing our own way of being. We seek a form that is sincere for us and acceptable to him. Our partner must do the same work of meeting: he cannot demand all the adaptations by declaring his preferences alone obvious.

The question of fairness then concerns circulation: does each person receive a real value, can each person express what is missing, does each person accept changing something? Two different gestures can nourish a deep reciprocity. Two identical services can, on the contrary, leave both people misunderstood. The useful account is not the one of objects returned; it is the one of lives actually taken into consideration.

Knowing our partner requires updating our information

What touched yesterday does not always produce the same effect today.

A gift can become a formality. An outing can lose its meaning if it serves to avoid a conversation. A bouquet received after a week of tenderness does not tell the same story as the same bouquet used to close an argument.

We must keep asking, observing and listening. What still touches our partner? What has become mechanical? What is he missing today?

"We are different" explains a starting point. That sentence cannot exempt us from learning a single word of our partner's language.

Inability and refusal do not tell the same story

A person can go through bereavement, a difficult pregnancy, a job loss or an exhaustion that temporarily reduces her capacity. Another has less money, less experience or a way of loving that is still clumsy.

The movement counts: listening, learning, contributing differently, gradually taking back one's share.

Refusal says something else: "I could look at what matters to you, but I want to keep what you bring without your needs changing my behaviour."

A couple can withstand an asymmetry. It cannot call complementarity the comfortable establishment of an absence of will.

A free gift does not become a hidden invoice

We can give freely, then bring out a debt as soon as the other refuses: "After everything I have done for you..."

A gift buys neither the body, nor silence, nor obedience, nor forgiveness. Consent remains free, current and revocable.

But the absence of an invoice does not prevent us from reading the relationship. We can observe that our generosity is neither appreciated, nor protected, nor met. We can then adjust what we give without claiming that the other owes us repayment for the past.

The freedom to give also contains the freedom not to maintain an imbalance.

Stating our ceiling is more honest than profiting from our partner's summit

We are not always ready to go as far as our partner.

Silence becomes unfair when we profit from her sacrifices by letting her believe that one day we will join her, when we have already decided never to invest that much.

Saying "I see what you are building, but I am not ready to go that far" can hurt. This truth gives the partner back the possibility of adjusting her efforts, revisiting her expectations or recognising an incompatibility.

We can also reduce an expectation whose price we refuse. We wanted more income, but not the absences necessary to produce it. We wanted constant availability, without leaving room for our partner's projects.

An expectation becomes fair when we look at its cost, its reciprocity and its consequences.

We can learn to give better

Discovering that we have asked a lot and brought little can provoke shame. Shame is not the goal.

Let us choose one expectation. Let us ask ourselves what experience we are seeking, what it costs our partner and what experience important to him we are neglecting.

Then let us ask a simple question: "What, in my way of being with you, makes you want to keep building? And what wears that desire down?"

The answer must be examined, not blindly obeyed. But it must then meet an act: keeping a promise, taking on a burden, consulting our partner, protecting a moment, supporting a project or honestly saying what we cannot offer.

Reciprocity becomes real when our partner can encounter new proof of it in his life.

If our partner loved me as I love him

Which expectation am I imposing on my partner while exempting myself from it?

What important value does he really receive from my presence?

Is it a temporary inability or a lasting refusal on my part?

What different gesture could respond to what matters to him?

If our roles were reversed, would I find this relationship fair?