ALWAYS DOING THE MATH

Growing up in a family where love came with invisible price tags taught you to become a master relationship mathematician 🧮. You learned to track every emotional transaction because survival meant understanding the hidden economy of affection in your home. This hypervigilance around relational give-and-take made you incredibly perceptive about fairness and skilled at reading the unspoken contracts in relationships.

But now you find yourself compulsively keeping score, waiting for bills to come due even in genuinely unconditional connections. You measure love by tangible currencies—gifts and favors, time and availability, touch and sex, words and orgasms—rather than by deeper intimacy of true understanding and connection. Part of you never stops bracing for the moment when someone who's been giving generously will finally present their emotional invoice—while simultaneously keeping your own careful ledger, ready to call out every instance of your partner's non-reciprocation when your resentment reaches its breaking point.