Boyfriend Accuses Girlfriend Of ‘Violating His Privacy’ After She Found The Secret Strike System He Created To Track Her ‘Offenses’
She's questioning if the relationship is worth salvaging after discovering this secret system.
Zamrznuti tonovi | Shutterstock When it comes to relationships, everyone has their moments of conflict and unresolved tension, but that's usually when communication comes into play. Rather than actually keeping score, healthy couples are able to work through their issues, and if not, then they reevaluate whether the relationship is something worth sticking around for. However, a woman recently discovered that instead of talking to her about relationship gripes, her boyfriend had been quietly documenting them behind her back.
In a post on Threads, a content creator shared a story about a 28-year-old woman who was shocked to discover the notes her boyfriend kept on her behavior, which were quite eye-opening about the dynamics of their relationship and, most importantly, how he felt.
A boyfriend accused his girlfriend of 'violating his privacy' after she found the secret system he created to track her 'offenses.'
"My boyfriend left his phone on the couch while he showered. A notification popped up from Notes, I opened it thinking it was a grocery list. It was a document titled 'Girlfriend Strikes,'" her story began.
She explained that her boyfriend was tracking her "offenses" with dates and the corresponding points that he assigned to them. For example, being late to his mom's dinner was worth 1 point, while not laughing at his jokes was worth 0.5 points. On the list was also anytime she'd buy herself flowers, which he labeled "attention seeking" and therefore counted as one point.
"At 10 points he wrote 'serious talk' and at 15 points 'reconsider relationship.' I confronted him and he said its just a system to keep things fair because I am emotional and forget what I do. I felt sick, like I was an employee on probation, not a partner," she continued.
The girlfriend quickly packed her bags and went to stay with her sister.
Her boyfriend didn't waste any time sending her multiple texts claiming that she'd "violated his privacy" by reading the system he'd created about her. She questioned if she might be overreacting or if this was enough of a dealbreaker to leave for good. If you're shouting from your screen, "leave," you're not alone.
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The fact is, keeping score in a relationship will eventually destroy it. If she leaves now, she will likely just save herself the heartache of leaving later. Psychologist Jeffrey Bernstein, Ph.D., explained, "The act of keeping score inhibits your ability to empathize with your partner and threatens to foster resentment in your relationship. This leads to misunderstandings because the process of scorekeeping is inherently biased."
Frankly, a relationship can only exist when there's both trust and respect, but above all else, valuable communication. It's one thing when you're just jotting down the most miscellaneous and irritating things that your partner does in your journal, and it's a completely different thing to keep this secret rubric where you're actively judging the most mundane parts of your partner's behavior.
Also, relationships shouldn't exist on any kind of point system. Nobody wants to feel as if they're one argument or even just a single disagreement away from a mathematical breakup. There's no such thing as keeping score when you're with someone. That's not fair, and the logic behind his system makes it even worse.
At the end of the day, she's not overreacting in the slightest, and in fact, she's absolutely right to feel unsettled by this entire debacle. Finding out your partner has been tracking and scoring your actions through some secret system would make anyone question whether that is the kind of relationship they should be staying in.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
