Accounting

Having a small child can bring many opportunities for middle-of-the-night pondering sessions. My son will wake me from time to time around four in the morning. Usually I feed him another bottle and he passes back into a deep sleep, and I am left trying to quiet my brain as it babbles endlessly and keeps me awake.

Recently, during one of these panicky moments of hyperactive brain wars, I started to think about relationships.

For anyone who knows me at all, finding out that I was analyzing different relationships at four in the morning isn't too surprising. It fits my character. But this time I really think I hit on something. A disclaimer- I firmly believe that I rarely have a purely original thought.

In my mind I started to think of our interactions with others as a bank account. Each relationship starts at a zero balance and then continues on, either becoming a deficit of negativity or an abundance of positivity. The thought that especially occurred to me was that when one member of a relationship (this could represent any type, such as marriage, friendship, parent-child etc.) "borrows" from that bank, someone has to pay it back in order for the balance to be positive or at least at zero.

By borrowing, I am referring to making offenses against the other individual or the relationship itself. Sadly there are times when borrowing is even a sweet way to refer to the stealing that takes place.

Too many times in my life I find myself in relationships with people who not only borrow against the relationship, but they refuse to acknowledge that they did so and therefore do not take accountability for their actions. In reaction to this, I sense the deficit, and then pay off the balance they have accrued. Granted, small "loans" like this are a liability of any relationship, especially when you have hormonal or pregnant friends. Additonally, times of stress require us to grant loans to others as they struggle. Hopefully, however, those same elements of grace will be given back to the offended when they morph into the offender role.

But, the kicker is this. I firmly believe that if the "loans" are continually accrued by one member of the relationship a literal form of interest starts to apply, whether the individual parties recognize it or not. Ties are stretched and stressed between each other, and resentments are sure to occur. Until each member owns their own actions, these loans continually occur.

There are saints out there who can pay the loans of their counterparts unconditionally. However, I am finding that I am not one of them. I have bankrupted myself too many times to be interested in stomaching loans and stifling interest/resentments on behalf of others.

I would much rather have relationships with people who can first acknowledge and own the fact that they offend or borrow against the relationship, and then make the effort the pay the loan back with a simple apology.

It's too bad that credit card companies don't forgive debts this easily. But there really isn't a way to put a definitive price tag on the words "I'm sorry" because after all, those words are priceless.