Knowing how to share

Javier is a 20-something-year-old bachelor, an expert in the nature of the modern man. Week by week, he will clue you in on what men really want – and what really goes on in those heads of theirs.

A major issue in relationships which tends to cause a lot of problems, but doesn’t seem to get properly addressed early enough, is the issue of property and ownership.

You see, a lot of the time it seems to me that while the things that people have prior to joining a relationship are technically still their own, very often one of the persons in the relationship tends to think that there is some unstated agreement giving joint ownership of the other person’s stuff. In other words, they see their significant other’s stuff and think, “I know it belongs to him/her, but I can use it anytime I want or feel”.

Where this ownership issue starts to cause problems is when one person (Person A) uses significant other’s (Person B) things and forgets to do so with common courtesy. This often prompts the other to get annoyed or even angry, depending on what happened to begin with. But the thing that really starts the arguments is that after Person B voices annoyance about Person A’s lack of courtesy while using the things, Person A almost always (and I mean always) interprets Person B’s annoyance to mean that he/she doesn’t want Person A using his/her things.

And because Person A and Person B are supposed to be in a ‘relationship’, in which they both are emotionally, physically, and more importantly, materially available to each other, Person A gets upset and starts an argument. Let me illustrate.

The other day this guy I know had just bought some calling credit for his cellphone, and put it on. Not too long afterwards, his girlfriend comes and asks him for a phone call, then goes on to talk on the phone until the calling credit is all but finished. Then she tells him, “Sorry honey, but your credit done. I have to buy you another one”.

The boyfriend gets upset and starts to quarrel about his finished credit, and his girlfriend gets equally upset and began to repeat, “So what, I can’t make a phone call on your phone from now on. Is that what you’re saying?”

As the argument unfolded, the guy kept insisting that what she did was inconsiderate since he could have wanted to make a phone call after she had used the phone, and furthermore he shouldn’t have to tell her to consider that possibility. The girlfriend, however, was not trying to hear anything the boyfriend was saying, and kept asking him how he could be upset with her about something as cheap as calling credit.

Then she jumped to saying that his anger meant he didn’t want her using his phone.

First of all, everybody knows it’s a white lie when someone tells you they will give the credit back to you after borrowing your phone to make a call. And secondly, as an impartial observer/relationship expert, it’s pretty obvious that the girlfriend was wrong.

It is clear from all she was saying that according to her, they had agreed on some previous occasion that she had unlimited access to his calling credit so clearly he couldn’t be upset about the fact that she finished it. He, on the other hand, was trying to let her know that he didn’t sign that contract with her, and that it was inconsiderate for her to use his stuff like that. Obviously, this situation is going to cause a lot of problems for the both of them in the future.

How can this situation be helped? By good, old-fashioned communication, and more specifically communication about boundaries. Some relationship experts will tell you that there is no ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ in committed relationships, but I say forget about that. There should be things that belong expressly to each person in a relationship and couples should spend time talking about those things.

This way both persons will know that they should never get so comfortable as to forget that they are to treat each other’s things (and each other) with courtesy and respect. With this happening on a regular basis, the courtesy will have no choice but to spill over into other areas of the relationship, and that will inevitably make for a better relationship.

I can’t see where the relationship will suffer where the couples are talking about what belongs to who, unless of course, the people involved are control freaks, but that’s another column for another time. Remember men, sharing is caring, but caring sometimes means knowing how to share.