The biggest mistake I see in 70-80% of couples I counsel is the search for fairness. The moment fairness leaves a relationship, warmth moves in.
What keeps people from building happy relationships?
I counsel couples and individuals almost every day. And in 70-80% of cases I see the very same mistakes.
The biggest problem I fight as a counsellor (aside from plain foolishness) is the search for fairness in a relationship.
A lot of people carry subconscious rules: everything has to be 50/50, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. We’re partners, so we should pull the weight together.
But I have yet to meet a single happy couple living by that model.
People want a harmonious relationship, yet they take on the role of judge towards the person they love. It’s like wanting to get rich while spending all your money on sports betting.
The moment we let fairness into our relationship, we say goodbye to everything good in it. We aren’t perfect people, we make mistakes and do stupid things. And in those moments we want to feel support, not a fair punishment for our slip-up.
Every one of us would like to be next to someone loving, kind, forgiving, someone who respects us. But for some reason many people choose the opposite: they put on the judge’s robe and try to “restore justice” and pay their partner back in the same coin.
And everyone’s idea of what’s fair is different. As soon as one of the two decides they’ve been treated unfairly, they shut down, pull away, take offence, and often subconsciously start getting even.
The search for fairness leads to this: over a very short time people pile up so many grievances and complaints against each other that they can no longer talk calmly, only argue.
The same mutual accusations go round in circles, and each of them thinks everything would be fine if only the other person finally heard them and changed…
But it doesn’t happen, year after year (and most likely never will), because when there’s a judge next to us we defend ourselves, we make excuses, we counterattack, we try to dodge the sentence — we do anything except change.
Real change comes when we feel that we’re loved and respected without any conditions. When what stands in front of us isn’t a list of demands but the person we love, who will support us even when we acted wrongly or selfishly.
I see it in my clients: the moment fairness leaves a relationship, warmth moves in.
So everyone decides for themselves what matters more. Defending your own idea of what’s “fair” — or being happy.
Do you agree that fairness kills everything in a family?
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