Before you read any further, go back and read the title of this section, “Getting What You Deserve.”  Think about this title for a moment and about what it means to you.  Does it conjure up feelings of getting a reward after a long period of hard work?  Does it make you think of denying yourself something and then finally getting that thing that you’ve done without?  Or does it make you think of all the times that you’ve done thankless tasks, worked really hard, suffered for awhile, and then you get the recognition and appreciation and praise that you had not received before?  Does the title make you think of any of those or similar things?  Feeling like one “gets what one deserves” is often thought of in terms like these.  People feel that, if they’ve worked hard for something, if they’ve paid their dues, if they’ve made sacrifices, then they “should” get a reward after all that.  In fact, people often feel entitled to a pay-off after all that they’ve put in.  It’s only fair, right?  Now, when reading the title, “Getting What you Deserve,” did it conjure up for you, at any time, any of the negative things that you’ve done to people?  Did it make you think of any of the times that you’ve been neglectful, or rude, or insensitive?  Did the title remind you of people who’ve been hurt or upset by things that you did or didn’t do?  What most people don’t understand about “getting what one deserves” is that, regardless of what kinds of behavior a person has exhibited, the dynamic is the same.  They may truly get what they deserve.  But what is it that you deserve to get?

Often in relationships, one does not get what they deserve.  A man who does not pay attention to what his partner is saying still gets listened to by that partner.  A woman who is highly supportive of her partner gets essentially abandoned when she needs support.  A guy who goes out of his way to attend to the needs of his partner is all but ignored when his needs are to be fulfilled.  Are these people getting what they deserve?  It has been my experience that, when many people enter therapy and talk about how poorly they’re treated by their partner, what the partner is lacking, what the partner does not bring to the relationship or what needs of theirs are not being fulfilled, it’s often illuminating to take that person on a stroll down memory lane.

When couples or individuals enter therapy and they do a lot of this complaining, I listen intently because it’s important to do so.  At some point, though, I take an inventory of their previous relationships, whether with a partner, friend or family member, but especially in their romantic relationships.  I’ve often found a curious thing: some of these people who complain so adamantly about how they’re being treated in their current relationship have, at some point, treated a previous partner in similar ways.  I had a woman in therapy once who told me a very familiar story.  She was a hard worker, very responsible, and very invested in having a successful relationship.  She’d been with her boyfriend for a little more than a year.  They were generally happy but when they fought, some ugly stuff came out.  She entered therapy by herself, as he would not come in, and she told me of how he would berate her when they got into an argument, and how he would demean and diminish anything good that she did, and that he generally made her feel badly about herself.  We worked on these feelings for quite awhile.  It is was important to build her up, so that she could stand up straighter and stronger, and so that I could help her to get maybe a different perspective on things.  For a session or two, the boyfriend did come in with her, and it was fairly obvious that at least some of what she was saying was indeed accurate.  He was kind of a jerk and a bully.  When I did not allow him to beat up on her he, like any bully, backed down and no longer came to sessions.  After a couple more sessions, I had her talk about some of her previous relationships.

This woman was incredibly consistent in some of her personal characteristics.  Her whole life she saw the value of hard work and she took this outlook into her relationships, too, and worked very hard at them.  She took responsibility for getting things done, as she had rarely had people in her life on whom she could rely.  It was vitally important to her that her relationships worked out because, like most of us, she just wanted to be happy with someone.  Here’s the thing, though, by having these personal characteristics, which are not bad things to have, she acted on them in such a way that she essentially bullied the hell out of any guy she was with.  This was a very strong-willed woman.  When a problem came up in some of her previous relationships, she worked very hard, as was important to her, to fix it.  She failed to see that, sometimes, one person doesn’t need to “fix” a particular issue, but that both partners need to come together, respectfully, and figure out, together, the best way or ways to deal with the issue.  Instead of addressing things together, she felt that she had to take full responsibility for solving the problem because, based on her experience, she could depend on her partner to help out, pitch in, or offer anything of substance or use.  All this approach accomplished was that she only used her perspective and her tactics to address a problem, and she totally locked out her partner from ever even offering input or assistance or effort in a situation that had relevance to him, too.  These two things, working hard and taking responsibility, both played into the pressure she felt to have a “good relationship,” so she did both of these things, for this very reason, as often and as much as she could, even when it didn’t work.  That’s what most people do when confronted with a problem: they try to do the things that they know how to do to solve the problem, and if what they know how to do doesn’t work, they don’t stop and try a new approach, they just keep doing what they know how to do harder.  So, the woman with the strong work ethic and strong sense of responsibility wound up having very little patience or tolerance for any guy that wasn’t as intense as she was.  When a problem arose, it was up to her to fix it.  When guys in previous relationships attempted to help or provide input, she tended to be kind of nasty to them and didn’t mind using words like “stupid” or “useless” when describing what she thought of them or their ideas or efforts.  When it came time to take responsibility for something, she took it all and she took it quickly.  These guys never had a chance to get involved in anything because she had already “taken care of it.”  The thing was that, even though she swiftly took all control of the situation from these guys, it didn’t stop her from jumping all over them about her having to be the one “all the time” who had to take care of things.  When some guys responded that she didn’t give them a chance to help out, she typically told them that they would’ve messed things up anyway.  Basically, she painted these guys into a corner and then criticized them for being there!

Relationship after relationship, her common cry was, “why can’t I get someone that I deserve?”  Although it was tough for her to hear, I told her that her current relationship was pretty much the answer that she’d been searching for.  Using example after example, I helped her to see that she had more in common, behavior-wise, with the guy that she was with than she did with most of the men in her past.  Her driven and critical style with her previous boyfriends was identical to the bullying behavior of her current one.  Regardless of whether a man or a woman exhibits the behavior, it’s the same behavior and causes the people that it’s leveled at to feel the same way: bullied, disrespected and criticized.  This woman’s biggest problem with the current relationship was that he and she were too much alike, not that they were too different.  She wound up in a relationship with someone who was a bigger bully than she was and she just couldn’t handle it.  Not meaning to sound negative about it, but she got what she deserved in the sense that she got back those attitudes and behaviors that she was putting out to others.  While most people think of “getting what they deserve” in the sense of, “I put out nice things so I should get nice things in return,” it also often works the same way when people display negative behaviors towards others that they wind up getting that shown back to them, as well.  A colleague of mine once said, “Be the kind of person you want to attract.”  When both partners put out those things that they value and do so in a generous and respectful way, they increase their chances of getting back some very good things that they richly deserve.

Interested in learning more? The following courses are recommended at Don't Date A Psycho University:

"How to Prepare for Your Best Relationship EVER!"

"Getting What You Want and Feeling Good About It"

"Working Through Your Relationship Problems"

"How to Stop Being Overly Dependent, but Still Be in Love"