“How come David gets a bigger piece of cake than I do. That’s not fair.” “It’s her turn. I had to unload the dish washer last time. That’s not fair.” We have all heard our children make these kind of statements because they think everything should be fair. We often just chalk up their complaining to “being kids.” Oh, but I forgot to mention – those statements didn’t come from kids but from adults.
Most of us want life to be fair – even as adults. We think that our spouse should share the load of chores with us. Ok. So far that doesn’t sound unreasonable. Where it begins to get out of balance is when we start to keep score. “I vacuumed the last two weeks in a row. It should be your turn. Otherwise it is not fair.”
Believing fairness to mean that we each do the same thing the same number of times creates an unwieldy “ledger” to keep track of. Perhaps a better approach would be to decide what things you are each good at or enjoy doing, and split some of the responsibilities that way first. It is possible that only a short list will remain, which is much easier to navigate.
But beyond that, I would suggest a different standard to base your feelings. How about if instead of concerning ourselves with “was I treated fairly,” we focused on, “Is what I just did, loving?” I have consistently seen that couples who focus on “loving” rarely feel the need to play the “fairness” card. I urge you to try it this week and see what happens.