You’re keeping score. So are they.

Six ticks, thirty seconds. No couples workshop.

Tick what’s true

Nothing ticked yet.

Tap what’s true. It stays on your screen. Nobody sees it.

Try one thing today

Read your last three messages to your partner. Report, or case?

The one-page guide

How I stopped keeping score, in five moves.

Read your last three messages to your partner.

I messaged my wife every morning with what I had done. I told myself I was keeping her informed. I was building a case.

When they go quiet, don’t push.

She needed space. I felt space as rejection and made more noise. She needed the noise to stop before she could open. I needed her to open before I could stop.

See the pattern.

We were not incompatible. We were two people protecting ourselves in ways that stopped the other feeling safe. Neither of us wrong. Both of us alone in the same room.

Ask the question that points inward.

Not “why does this keep happening to me”. Ask: what is it in me that keeps writing this scene? I was accusing her of not being enough because I couldn’t sit with feeling that I was not enough.