“Sally,” a smart, professionally successful woman, confesses resentment toward her partner. Sally pays all the household expenses, entertainment, vacations, and everything else. Her partner, who has been out of work for a year, visits with friends and dreams of starting her own business. She doesn’t look for a job, cook, clean, or do yardwork. She gets mad when Sally asks her to help, and points out that Sally can afford to pay.
Outrageous? It’s easy to label the partner–what a sense of entitlement! But what’s up with Sally? She suffers from the opposite problem–destructive un-entitlement. Sally doesn’t get it that it’s okay to expect your partner to meet you halfway, do her part, share the load. Sally learned this at the feet of depressed, unstable parents who needed their small daughter to take on adult responsibilities. She thought care-taking is the same as caring.
Caring is between adult equals. Care-taking is taking care of someone who isn’t meeting adult responsibilities. It’s good to help take care of children, the elderly, people with disabilities, anyone passing through temporary life hardships. But check out the entitlement issue. Do you have a healthy sense of what you deserve as an equal partner? Or are you destructively un-entitled?