I know the opening sentence is clumsy and badly phrased, but it takes aim at a lethal, soul-scarring relationship myth, so grant me a few more paragraphs of your attention, and if you think I'm talking nonsense, abandon ship.
What on earth is the fifty-fifty myth in relationship crises? I mean the common and automatic view that every time a marriage or a relationship runs aground, both partners have a part in it, and each side needs to work on their part, and they should communicate constructively, and renew the romance, and honey and sweets and violins and dim the lights slowly, please.
And do you know what? It isn't always like that. There are cases in which the blame for the breakdown in the relationship rests mostly on one side, and we shouldn't be embarrassed to say so.
I am about to set this out, but before that a sharp and serious warning to my readers: don't you dare — I repeat: don't you dare — use this piece to attack your partner. Don't forward it to them pointedly in the style of "remember what I told you this morning?" No, and no again.
The dark purpose of this piece is solely to make you look inside yourself, to accelerate a reckoning with your own soul, and to check clearly with yourself whether you are that partner I am talking about, the one who, hand on heart, is almost solely responsible for wrecking the relationship.
This false democracy of blame in relationships begins logically enough: relationships are genuinely a joint product built, at least at the start, by two people who met and covertly wrote a shared contract answering the questions: "How is it right for us to live together?", "What will the division of roles between us be?", and most important — and most neglected — "How do we see the future?"
The thing is that the relationship, that vague theoretical entity woven between two people, is the most fragile element in your house. People are used to looking after themselves and thinking about their own interests. They brush their teeth in the morning for themselves, not for the relationship. Bottom line — a relationship always needs someone in the house to look after it.
And sometimes that role falls to only one person.
There are situations in which only one side, mainly, initiates conversations, makes sure things are pleasant together, makes the coffee, plans the holidays, endures the frustrations, and stays in bed to hug the other afterwards.
And that is of course only the behavioural side. The visible one. What is sadder is that those one-sided behaviours indicate that only one side cares about the relationship, only one side notices it.
Now what's the problem — that we human beings are thoroughly bad at taking responsibility. We wrangle. We say "but you're not all right either." It's sad, but most of the time it matters more to us to preserve our self-image than to defend the most important joint enterprise we built.
And so this piece uses the oldest nasty trick in the book — it talks to you, but doesn't listen. It is one-sided. You can't answer. Only look inward and check with yourself whether you are the person I'm talking about.
And if you've reached the conclusion that you are, stop reading my nonsense and leap back to the living room to save it while there's still breath in you. Go on, the house is on fire.