Emotional Accounting

[rgraham666]

I came to the conclusion many years ago that many people engage in what I call 'Emotional Accounting'. That is, they keep ledger books in their heads on other people with actions divided into credits ('postive' actions) and debits ('negative' actions)

There are a number of problems with this.

First, there's no common currency. If you're keeping a financial ledger, every one has at least a rough idea of what a dollar is worth. With emotional accounting, everything is valued by the person keeping the accounting. Others may not share this value.

A classic example is toilet seats. A guy will remember to put it down once a week and say "I'm doing good." And puts a credit in the emotional ledger he keeps for himself.

The woman thinks "He never puts the seat down. Never." And a big debit goes into the ledger she keeps on him.

Another problem is that we have a tendency to 'weight' entries in the ledger. I've often felt that when people keep ledgers on me, and if that ledger contains 100 credits and 2 debits, when balanced comes out to 1 debit.

I also noticed that I kept an emotional ledger on myself. With both the problems listed above applying.

As a result, I still have problems keeping an accurate account. I tend to heavily weight the 'debits' in my account, and ignore the 'credits'.

So, questions raised by this observation. Is an emotional ledger a useful tool? Could we ever come up with a 'common currency' for emotional accounting? Is emotional accounting as vulnerable to corruption as financial accounting?

Feel free to discuss.

 

[Guest]

i so cant micromanage emotions. if i feel something, youll know it right off the bat...ie:

you fucktard! you left the toilet seat up again.
you lovebucket, you put the toilet seat down.

life is too short to keep tabs on every emotion. i just let it flow because i dont have the energy to keep it bottled up.

besides, youre right.. there is no equal system and having a double entry balance is an oxymoron where this is concerned.
i may not be the most emotionally stable person, but damn if you dont know where you stand with me.

my 2 pennies.
v~

 

[rgraham666]

And I at least, love you for it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I think it was in Catch 22 that one the characters (Major Major?) looked at everything that happened in terms of his career. They were either "black eyes" or "feathers in his cap".

I don't know, rg. I'm aware of moral authority in a relationship, but I don't keep books or think of it in accounting terms. I just try and do the best I can all the time.

---dr.M.

 

[ferociouskittycat]

Dear rgraham

Your agony column intrigued me.

Firstly, I have been severly dealt with cupid's arrow. Missed my heart and struck me in the eye, but that is another letter...

My partner, as loveable and fuckable as he is, and believe me, he IS fuckable!!... He seems to hold onto past events and use them as amunition.

Sure, I've fucked my neighbours. Half the street infact, but he keeps bringing this up.

Maybe it's just me. I live by, 'forgive and forget'.

I guess my recent bout of clamydia(sp?), sorry the doctor brushed it off as a generial disease... I didn't quite catch the meaning or spelling.

Anyway, getting back on track here...

I really feel for him. Sure, I love him. Who wouldn't love a nine inch thick cock shoved up your ass? (His fave position, by the way).

It's just that he gets so jealous all of the time.

I mean, one time, I had my brother and his mates over and we were all playing a game of naked twister. He got jealous of that!!

Sheesh, really!! It was just a game!!

Another time, and this was quite recent, my neighbour offered to test the strength of the batteries left in my dildo. An innocent request, so I thought. But, NO.... my partner ranted and raved. What's a girl to do?

I had one of my friends, male of course, girls don't seem to like me for some reason.... Anyway, he asked me if I'd tell him an honest opinion of whether or not I thought his condom fitted him. Well blow me down through a straw!! My partner arked up again!!

Why he keeps bringing these things up I'll never know.

Can you help?

 

[shereads]

Definitely used as a manipulative weapon: the insincere.apology. I never realized that until I heard it from some pop psychologist, and as it happened I was married to someone who apologized for things so trivial I wouldn't have noticed them at all if he hadn't apologized. I'm sorry I overslept, you must find me boring. I'm sorry I don't feel like going out tonight, but we can if you want to. I'm sorry that it's starting to bug you that I'm sorry.



A sincere apology is a valuable gift, second only to the gracioius acceptance of one. A manipulative apology drips with hurt and resentment and the unspoken message: "You've made feel I should apologize."

I once asked my ex to please not apologize so often, and he apologized.



I swear.

Not sure if this falls under the emotional accounting topic, but it did seem designed to adjust the columns.

Edited to add: RG, if this post was inappropriate here, I'm really sorry. I didn't intend to hijack your thread, but if I did I apologize.

 

[bloodsimple]

rg,

I recognise the kind of accounting you refer to - both from myself, and from others.

Doesn't this come down to conditions? i.e. if we truly love someone unconditionally, we wouldn't keep any kind of score. Sure, we'd be pissed off and say so, or delighted and say so, because communication is a key part of a relationship. But we wouldn't keep score, because unconditional love (whether friendship, family, or romantic/sexual) renders that redundant.

As far as self-accounting, again I think it has to do with conditions. We create an expectation of ourself that we can't possibly live up to, and then berate ourselves for "failing" to live up to this ideal. Thus, one (big) mark in the debit column. Fear of failure is a key driver of many people's behaviour, but it should be recognised that it is a fear. Were we able to let go and achieve real acceptance, there would be no columns at all, just a wish to understand ourselves better.

That looks like rambling to me. I guess the bottom line is that any kind of accounting signals something that should be let go, rather than something that should be examined or totted up.

shereads - the insincere apology is a form of passive/aggressive - it is inviting you to either stop any form of criticism or questioning, or to apologize yourself, thus absolving the other person from responsibility. Alternates include "I must look terrible in this" and "I'm holding you back".

I like the "ignoring compliments" gambit. You compliment someone, and they completely dismiss your compliment - "You don't mean that", "Oh no not really" etc. Over time, this "modesty" actually says "I don't value your opinion at all, and you have nothing that makes me feel happy or better about myself". Dispiriting, to say the least.

As with shereads, I apologise to RG if this looks like a hijack.

 

[rgraham666]

Oh hell no. No hijacking here.

I wanted people talking about well, people, how they act and why.

Shereads, was your ex Canadian by any chance. Sorry if this upsests you.

Bloodsimple? I think it's a given in North American society that we are going to set expectations that are unreasonable and end up making us feel bad about being 'failures'. It's why so many of us chase after the Almighty Dollar, as if having money somehow makes us better people. Unfortunately, if we were as rich as Bill Gates we would be unhappy because we weren't as rich as God.

I blame our history. There is still a lot of Puritan in us. "The world is a vale of tears, we're evil and unworthy and any attempt to change that will condemn us to Hell."

Now that we've killed God, we're trying to replace Her. Not succeeding very well considering we're only human, and we're unhappy with ourselves for being only human.

Silly humans.

 

[cantdog]

I think vella_ms is showing maturity, though I daresay she will snort in derision to hear it said! The element she has that emotional accounters don't is forgiveness.

About the same time I was moving through my existential phase, I suddenly realized, because someone asked about it in conversation, that I didn't have a better dead list and I wasn't holding any grudges.

Today, the sole people for whom I harbor fantasies of revenge are those who are attacking me personally, or attacking my close family. Even that passes rather quickly, because I forgive.

I don't forget. The history, without an emotional grudge on its back, will always enter in when I need to evaluate the person's motives or characterize her actions. I don't forget, but I do forgive, once I understand.

Grudges cost you a lot of effort. I was glad to see them go. That's why the so-called "justice" system seems so puerile. It's revenge-based.


cantdog

 

[gauchecritic]

The problem I see with this accounting thing is that for the pluses and minuses to mean anything then the initial state has to be zero, this is hardly ever true.

Finding someone fantastically good looking, great in bed and considerate to a fault is not a zero position when you open the ledger. (relationship) (obviously the ledger was hopefully opened before you got into bed with them)

Seems to me that the only entries that can be made are minuses, and I think this is usually the case.

Women don't think their husbands are great because they put down the toilet seat, only that they are bad for leaving it up.

Sending flowers every birthday and anniversary and 'just because' merely raises the zero level rather than making it positive.

This, it seems to me, also applies to casual or everyday relationships too.

A colleague asked to help when you can't find why your web page link is dead doesn't get a plus for solving the problem, that's just the kind of guy he is. A 'too busy' refusal will always earn them a minus.

A girl paying for drinks for her mates on a night out is simply taking her turn, but if she slopes off the toilets when it's her round will earn herself a minus.

Gauche

 

[Guest]

I do not believe there can be any such thing as "emotional accounting" outside one's self. There is hardly that.

Perdita

 

[shereads]

Oh hell no. No hijacking here.

I wanted people talking about well, people, how they act and why.

Shereads, was your ex Canadian by any chance. Sorry if this upsests you.

Bloodsimple? I think it's a given in North American society that we are going to set expectations that are unreasonable and end up making us feel bad about being 'failures'. It's why so many of us chase after the Almighty Dollar, as if having money somehow makes us better people. Unfortunately, if we were as rich as Bill Gates we would be unhappy because we weren't as rich as God.

I blame our history. There is still a lot of Puritan in us. "The world is a vale of tears, we're evil and unworthy and any attempt to change that will condemn us to Hell."

Now that we've killed God, we're trying to replace Her. Not succeeding very well considering we're only human, and we're unhappy with ourselves for being only human.

Silly humans.

The need to measure ourselves against a standard of success or failure - In your experience, are people more likely to compete with themselves? Or to be overly aware of how they might be perceived by others?

This reminds of somethiing a Brit said about Americans, after spending six months visiting our theme parks and tourist attractions where everything is bigger-than-life. (In particular, he was fascinated with a wax museum in California whose theme was life-size, 3-dimensional recreations of famous paintings like The Last Supper; and with a dinner-theater where diners are served by Wenches and Knaves and eat with their hands while watching a jousting tournament.)



(Americans have a lot of class; some of it happens to be low.)

His take on America's attraction to themed entertainment was in part, that a nation of immigrants hungers for a history; and that lacking royalty, we want our entertainment to be bigger than life. (A reproduction of The Last Supper might not sell a lot of tickets, but Americans will pay to see a BETTER Last Supper with a life-size Jesus.)

Aside from the hunger for a history, he suggested that Americans view our lives as a narrative, with ourselves as the main character. I'm sure we've all known people whose personal mythology is stunning in its lack of reality, but to an extent do most of us see ourselves in a sort of ongoing stageplay with the expectation that plotlines will be resolved? Maybe we keep those mental tallies of accumulated rights and wrongs, successes and failures, to help us predict the ending.

 

[McKenna]

So, questions raised by this observation. Is an emotional ledger a useful tool? Could we ever come up with a 'common currency' for emotional accounting? Is emotional accounting as vulnerable to corruption as financial accounting?

RG, your questions have raised new ones for me. For instance, what about "boundaries." I think boundaries are a useful tool in any relationship; it allows the person with whom you are involved to know how to treat you and to a certain extent, what is expected if they treat you in any certain way.

Is this the same as an emotional ledger? I'm not sure. Could be.

But what if someone oversteps my boundaries? What then? Doesn't it seem almost "right" somehow, to mark it in my ledger? Otherwise, people would walk all over me, and that definitely is not "okay."

In this case, I think emotional accounting is vulnerable to corruption, especially if one uses the ledger to account for "small" things as opposed to big things. There's a difference between leaving the toilet seat up and out-and-out lying about something important. Leaving the toilet seat up is an annoyance; lying to me is overstepping my boundaries.

 

[impressive]

Although not a direct parallel by any stretch, I can't help but compare the tendency to keep such a ledger to the fundamental differences between thinkers and feelers a la Myers-Briggs personality typing.

Thinkers, thinking it is "weak" (or irrational) to express feeling as they occur tend to bottle them up (record them in their ledger). Feelers, on the otherhand, feel no such inhibition & let it fly. Get it out. Let go of it. Good or bad. Move on.

FWIW,

 

[rgraham666]

The problem I see with this accounting thing is that for the pluses and minuses to mean anything then the initial state has to be zero, this is hardly ever true.

Finding someone fantastically good looking, great in bed and considerate to a fault is not a zero position when you open the ledger. (relationship) (obviously the ledger was hopefully opened before you got into bed with them)

Seems to me that the only entries that can be made are minuses, and I think this is usually the case.

Women don't think their husbands are great because they put down the toilet seat, only that they are bad for leaving it up.

Sending flowers every birthday and anniversary and 'just because' merely raises the zero level rather than making it positive.

This, it seems to me, also applies to casual or everyday relationships too.

A colleague asked to help when you can't find why your web page link is dead doesn't get a plus for solving the problem, that's just the kind of guy he is. A 'too busy' refusal will always earn them a minus.

A girl paying for drinks for her mates on a night out is simply taking her turn, but if she slopes off the toilets when it's her round will earn herself a minus.

Gauche

Gauche, your post bought up another thought I've had kicking around for a while.

I've often noticed that people can't seem to remember nothing. That is the everyday goodness of just getting the job done and being nice to everyone often doesn't seem to be remembered.

But make a mistake and guess the first thing that pops into a person's mind next time they encounter you? Perhaps that's why ledgers get so out of whack?

Shereads, I've often observed that North Americans, or at least north of the Rio Grande are often really severe control freaks. Maybe that's why they keep ledgers? They may believe that if they have complete knowledge of the past it will allow them to control the future.

McKenna, I don't think a ledger and boundaries are quite the same thing. Although I can see boundaries as useful to a ledger keeper for weighting transgressions.

In my experience, I've too often had to guess at the boundaries. This is rather like wandering through a minefield. Surprise! WHAM!

That's why my policy, when I think a relationship might last for a while is to lay down two rules. First, we communicate clearly with each other and second, we forgive one another when we fuck up. Which as human beings, we are bound to do.

It didn't work last time, but that was because we both broke the rules. We were both so used to obfuscating that we didn't even notice when we did it. And she wouldn't forgive.

Still, I'm hopeful about the next time.

I disagree, somewhat, with your take on being lied to. If my lover was late for dinner, lied about it saying she was stuck in traffic, and I found out she had actually gone out for a drink with the girls from work; I would be unhappy, but I would forgive her.

If it turned out she was late because she was getting butt fucked in her car by another lover; I would still forgive her. It would be over, but I'd forgive her.

 

[cantdog]

Lying

"Hey, Mom, I'm sick of hearing you make rules and I'm late already. Goodbye!"

"I'll be a little later than usual today getting home. My connection is in town. Maybe supper at 6:30?"

No, I'm afraid we all have to lie. I've heard the crap about lying: "I didn't mind that you gambled away the rent; it was that youlied to me about it."

Yeah. I didn't mind you resenting my lying to you, but you just lied to me about it.

Piling it on, adding an additional "lying about it" crime to the first one, is a manipulative tool. I appreciate candor and respect. I do believe my first impulse is candor and respect. But if people are to live with one another, there is a role for the lie. You have to know when, and you have to know when to let it go.

"I'm going to fuck your daughter this evening, sir, so we have to get going; we're both quite eager and the play starts by eight."

"You can make that rule if you like, but I will certainly circumvent it."

"Yes, you have become considerably more wrinkled over the last thirty years, darling, but I manage to overlook it entirely, most of the time."

A no-lying rule, boundaries or no, is not anything a sane person would adopt.

 

[McKenna]

McKenna, I don't think a ledger and boundaries are quite the same thing. Although I can see boundaries as useful to a ledger keeper for weighting transgressions.

In my experience, I've too often had to guess at the boundaries. This is rather like wandering through a minefield. Surprise! WHAM!

That's why my policy, when I think a relationship might last for a while is to lay down two rules. First, we communicate clearly with each other and second, we forgive one another when we fuck up. Which as human beings, we are bound to do.

It didn't work last time, but that was because we both broke the rules. We were both so used to obfuscating that we didn't even notice when we did it. And she wouldn't forgive.

Still, I'm hopeful about the next time.

I disagree, somewhat, with your take on being lied to. If my lover was late for dinner, lied about it saying she was stuck in traffic, and I found out she had actually gone out for a drink with the girls from work; I would be unhappy, but I would forgive her.

If it turned out she was late because she was getting butt fucked in her car by another lover; I would still forgive her. It would be over, but I'd forgive her.

Wise words RG, thank you for sharing. You've certainly given me something to think about, i.e. forgiveness. As humans, yes, we are bound to fuck up, I guess it comes down to learning what you can live with in regards to the "fucked up-ness" of a situation.

 

[McKenna]

Re: Lying

A no-lying rule, boundaries or no, is not anything a sane person would adopt.

I can see your point cantdog, but I also think you overstated it with the "I'm going to fuck your daughter this evening, sir, so we have to get going; we're both quite eager and the play starts by eight."

That would be tactless, to say the least. But then the dynamics of a relationship between a boyfriend/husband/parter and a father/father-in-law are quite different, say, than the dynamics between two lovers; A different degree of honesty is required.

 

[cantdog]

You are quite right, McKenna. But there is still a place for tact, even in a lover-to-lover, committed relationship.

If I did not care what she thought, why not tell her whatever is baldly true? But I do care. For that reason, I refrain from injuring her on both levels. I don't do some things I would otherwise have felt free to do; and I use a tactful wriggle to avoid lying while also avoiding a hurtful confrontation.

In my own thirty-two-year marriage, I have generally gone ahead and told her, tactlessly, when she insisted strongly enough. "Yes, of course I see you're fat now. I'm an artist. I see every detail." or other things, more important things. "I actually resent the way you think about that. It insults me. You even say it to your friends in conversation. To me it is pointlessly hateful to do that."

But she has to insist pretty strongly before I can feel she's really in a mood to hear the real "level of honesty" she likes to believe she wants.

I don't hide such things at all if I find them important. If I really felt humiliated by what she said to her friends, I would certainly tell her; but it made a witty conversation, and a joke at my expense is not such a terrible thing. Her being fatter than she was thirty years ago is not important in the least. But I believe with a whole heart that she doesn't need to hear me say it every time it comes up. "Did the laundry again; wow, the underwear is getting larger all the time, isn't it?"

Because it is not vital, why be candid for the sake of candid? If it's vital, a mistake being made in the way we are raising our daughter, a serious developing incompatibility in our relationship-- then of course.

But a social creature's existence is full of lies on all sides. The trick is to tell them for the right reasons, to avoid them if you can, and to let them go gracefully when their time is through.

Lying for advantage is still wrong. There are other examples of both sides of this divide. Candor is good. Trust is so essential you might almost say trust is love. Love is trust. But there still has to be some judicious tact, some things it is more sensible to keep secret or pass over.

But we see commitment,she and I, in a permanent context. We are not looking to draw boundaries beyond which behavior is unacceptable, because what if it was unacceptable? Would we have to terminate the commitment as we said we would?

No, we speak up and say don't! I'd be hurt if you did that, I'd be disappointed, to me that's hateful, to me that's deceitful. And our commitment means we listen to that sort of thing. We try to prevent such lines even needing to be drawn, because we want each other to be happy and we want each other to be able to trust.

I think the situation is different from boundaries. Boundaries are perhaps useful in winnowing potential mates, but if once there's a commitment, the emphasis moves away from the negative aspects-- and the boundary thing is negative-- toward mutual support, mutual trust, shared joys, open hearts. Respect is very important. But it can go very much deeper than a boundary. And it ends up having little to do with dignity. My daughter and wife walk on me quite a bit. I derive much of the meaning of my existence from my service to them and to my friends. If it helps them, let them walk.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

So, we're to say that lying is alright? I'm not sure I would agree with that.

 

[bloodsimple]

I don't believe that an emotional ledger is necessary to avoid "being walked on". This comes down to respect, and if someone respects you, they don't do the things that end up with you being walked on. They'll get that wrong occasionally, and you need a way to resolve that without it escalating, but once that's done, why pursue it or retain it?

As was mentioned earlier, I think a recollection of what someone did in the past can help you to understand their present, but this should relate to key issues about your relationship and not how many times you opened the door/forgot your keys/took the trash out.

I don't know if there's a difference between people who live with someone and people who live alone. I live alone, and if someone's forgotten to take the trash out, it'll have to be me. So I don't tend to keep emotional ledgers, because it's not a more general habit that I'm familiar with.

I think there's a difference between attitude and behaviour. Attitudes are built over time, through experiences, genetics, environment, friends and family, etc. To change attitudes requires time, patience, and a willingness to change. Behaviour can be altered much more quickly. Thus, you may think your partner is fat and resent that they aren't the slim, svelte thing you first met. That attitude may be hard to shift. But as Cant said, you don't have to mention it every waking moment (behaviour).

Example -

I was with someone who was convinced I was cheating on her. No reason to think this, no evidence, nothing. But she did. The explanation for this lay in her past and I knew her well enough to understand this. I didn't expect, or ask, her to change her attitude. For that, she needed to understand the issue and that would take time and support. But I did want her to change her behaviour - the constant accusations, the telephone calls at midnight, etc. As it turned out, she could change neither. But I think asking someone to change their behaviour because it hurts the person they love is reasonable. Asking them to change their attitude is a bigger question, and deserving of time, patience and trust on both sides.

 

[McKenna]

...snip...

I think the situation is different from boundaries. Boundaries are perhaps useful in winnowing potential mates, but if once there's a commitment, the emphasis moves away from the negative aspects-- and the boundary thing is negative-- toward mutual support, mutual trust, shared joys, open hearts. Respect is very important. But it can go very much deeper than a boundary. And it ends up having little to do with dignity. My daughter and wife walk on me quite a bit. I derive much of the meaning of my existence from my service to them and to my friends. If it helps them, let them walk.

Let me put it this way: I'm more honest with my mate than I am with anyone else in the world. Why is that? Because that is what our relationship is based on: honesty. And frankly, it's quite nice to have at least one relationship where I know exactly where I stand. It's refreshing. And now, since I've had a taste of it, it's vital. I'm learning, sadly, that not everyone can handle the truth. It interferes with the depth of a relationship if I can't be honest and she/he can't be honest in return. But to continue...

At times the honesty in my marital relationship is brutal and it hurts but you know what? When all is said and done and the dust has settled down, it's still the truth, and one can't argue with the truth. The truth is infinitely much easier to handle than a lie or deception.

I still think you're exaggerating when you mention refraining from commenting on her panties getting bigger; it's the truth, she knows it, you know it, but no one says you have to keep repeating it. That is not the point I'm making.

For me, boundaries are needed to teach people how to treat me. I don't appreciate liars, especially those who fool themselves into believing their lies are in my best interest. That's my boundary. I'm quite vocal about that boundary. I also don't appreciate those who would interfere and run my life. That's another boundary. To me, boundaries are about extreme honesty -not only with myself, but also for those with whom I contact. I believe in letting people know exactly where they stand. Less confusion in the long run.

 

[cantdog]

And what if you are wrong?

In telling your truth, what if indeed you had insufficient knowledge or had considered it less well than you might have, and your truth was not really anything but your hastily conceived opinion? That would still be exactly where they stood, and you'd have said so. Bully for the principle, I suppose.

The example above, from bloodsimple, who can write, by the way, once in a while, of a woman falsely convinced of his infidelity, would lead to her telling the unvarnished truth, because it might hurt but it is easier to deal with, because it let him know exactly where he stood.

But what it really shows is a rush to judgement and a vitriolic contempt for truth.

When you have the lock on the truth, you will know, I can see that, how to react. Truth is truth. But in the meantime, you have to notice that not always do you know what truth is.

If the adherence to an "extreme truth" principle is of paramount importance, then your "committed" relationships will fail because you are not as committed to them as you are to your truth-telling. I could stay committed to a person like that only by slaving. You may eventually find a slave. You may find one for whom what you believe is the most important thing.

The point is not truth or deception; rather, the point is that any single principle is always destructive carried through to the end. Any one master idea will carry you quite logically to grief. True good living involves an equilibrium.

You balance various "good" things, trying to find a path through them which honors them all. Valuing mercy does not mean you throw out justice. Valuing love does not mean abandoning judgement.

Honesty is a foundational sort of thing. I grant that. No one can make a good judgement without sound knowledge. But speech is more than honesty, and truthfulness is different from factual truth.

Let us say, for another example, that I know my wife's father was capable of seeing other women, recreationally. She doesn't know this and has a high opinion of him; she's proud of him. And without doubt, he loved his wife to the day she died, deeply, abidingly. Although not always exclusively! She is dead. He is remarried. My wife adores him and treasures the unsullied view she has of him and her mother together.

I say nothing. Truth be blowed. Whom does it serve to tell this thing? Even if I were in the room at the moment of his infidelity, what difference would that make? It is a limited ideal, honesty, compared with compassion and respect, justice, mercy, common sense!

Unitary absolute guiding principles mislead.

 

[McKenna]

And what if you are wrong? ...snip...

And what if YOU are wrong?

CD, you and I will not see eye to eye on this; I think you're fooling yourself, and you think the same of me. Let's agree to disagree.

 

[cantdog]

I apologize. Defending the lie is an extreme case, but I warn against absolutes. In this case I have overstepped the bounds. My poor judgement.

cantdog