A relationship suffers if you always expect favors from your partner

If you do your partner a favor in a relationship, do you expect to get something from him soon in return? Or if you give up something for a partner, do you expect praise for it?

The answers to these questions reveal whether you bring the spirit of barter to your relationship.

Constantly counting favors and favors in return is bad for the relationship. Studies have found that people are unhappier in relationships where the bartering spirit takes a lot of place.

However, most observations have been made in cross-sectional studies, and they do not reveal how relationships develop in such an atmosphere. New over 7,000 German hetero couples and covering a period of 13 years research complements previous findings.

Went it turns out that when the relationship gets longer, people reduce their demands for favors in return. The feeling of togetherness therefore deepens, and more things are done for the benefit of others without the need to settle accounts.

For other couples, however, the expectation of reciprocation evaporated more slowly. They were also more dissatisfied with their relationship.

It may be that dissatisfaction increases the desire to keep track of investments.

But accounting also eats away at the relationship. University of Toronto Haeyoung Gideon Park and the colleagues noticed that when people began to expect more favors from their partners in return, they were more dissatisfied with the relationship after two years.

The study was published by the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Published in Tiede magazine 12/2025.