The Relationship Habit That Makes You Unhappy + Living Far From Aging Parents

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**Scott Galloway** (1:35)
Welcome to Office Hours with Prop G. Today, we're revisiting some of our favorite questions about relationships. Let's bust right into it.
Question number one comes from Reddit. Aria1010 asks, I've heard you mentioned keeping scorecards in relationships and friendships. My question is how and why you decided to stop keeping scorecards, and what helped change your mindset? Thanks for the question. Yeah, this was specific or situational, or had to do with one relationship, and that is the relationship with my father. When I was eight years old, my mom came home. My mom just disappeared for a couple of weeks, and my dad didn't tell me why. It was the 70s. I remember being on the couch watching The Partridge Family. My mom's been out for two weeks, and I just started sobbing uncontrollably. My dad's like, what's wrong? I'm like, where's mom? It just dawned on me that mom's not around. My dad, I remember it was the first time I ever saw my dad, like fear in his eyes, like he didn't know what to do, and had to handle an eight-year-old sobbing uncontrollably on his couch. I think that's when he decided that my mom should come get me. A few days later, my mom showed up and said, pack your stuff, we're leaving. This wasn't exactly a Brene Brown, but a Stare Perel, like child care, and said, we gotta be out of here in 15 minutes. And I'm like, 15 minutes? I can't pack my, it's just like, we need to get out of here, your dad's gonna be home soon. I don't know if she was kidnapping me or just didn't want to see my dad. I don't know what the was going on anyways. Eight years old. And as is often the case, well, because my mom was taking care of me, I had a tendency to sanctify her and demonize my dad. And my dad didn't make our lives very nice. He was so extraordinarily cheap that we struggled economically. And that is as soon as my parents split, my dad went on to be upper middle class, and my mom and I immediately dove to the lower middle class, which was hard. And it wasn't that it was hard on me. Kids don't really need a lot of money. I was able, you know, 35 cents, an Abba's Abba bar, and a Schwinn bike, and you kind of got everything you need. We didn't have streaming media or iPhones, but it was very hard on my mom. And when you're the only child, especially, I think, the only boy, you just absorb their anxiety. I remember my mom like coming home, and my mom was like on the floor sobbing because the vacuum cleaner broke. And I'm like, well, we can get it fixed. And she's like, we don't have the money to get it fixed. And I was like, you're nine years old. And you're like, okay, what can I do to get a paper route to get the vacuum fixed? So that economic anxiety that was a direct result of my dad being such a bastard, quite frankly, because he could have helped us, made me resent him. And it stuck with me. As I got older, again, in college, I had no money, constantly stressed, constantly broke. Dad could have helped me in the bottom line is he didn't. And so I was resented him for that. And now having said that, my dad was a kick in the ass. My dad was a ton of fun, funny, nice, smart. He did love me. He would make an effort. He'd be in town and he would take me to movies and stuff. So he did try. And when my mom passed away, I kind of, I think my resentment towards him grew and I would go months, I think one time a year without speaking to him. And he didn't really know what was going on, but didn't have the presence to try and figure it out. And then I just sort of decided that I wanted to have my father in my life. And that I decided to focus on the good things. And rather than having a scorecard and thinking, okay, he did X amount, he gave me X amount of love, I'm only going to give him X amount of love. I said, well, what kind of son do I want to be? And the reality was I wanted to be a loving, generous son. And I was going to hold myself to that standard and just put away the scorecard. And that was such an enormous unlock for me, because I think about what kind of boss do I want to be? If I paid someone more than they're earning, I used to think younger, that pisses me off. They worked here for a year, I paid them a shit ton of money, and they added no fucking value. I hate that person. Now it's like, if you are a boss and people get more out of working for you, and maybe you get out of them, or you pay them above market, that's a win, that's a victory. If you're a better spouse to your, if it is really hard for your spouse to figure out ways to be as good to you as you are to them, that's a win. That's the whole fucking shooting match. That's what it means to have kids. I hope at some point my kids level up what I've done for them. It's going to take a while. I've invested a lot of my kids. I always tell them you're negative surplus value. So approaching relationships from the mindset of always wanting to have surplus value and say, okay, what kind of boyfriend do I want to be? What kind of son do I want to be? What kind of employer do I want to be? What kind of investor do I want? I used to get mad at CEOs of companies that invest and lost money. Now I'm like, no, I want to be a magnanimous, generous, supportive person. I've been on the board of a lot of companies I've invested in where they fucked up and lost all my money. And I try to be now, it's no problem. You're going to get back up. This is great. I went into the size wide open. Well done. Let me help you raise money for your next thing. That's the kind of guy I want to be. And I wasn't always that way. So decide what kind of person in every relationship, what kind of role do you want to play? And then hold yourself to that standard and put away the scorecard. Because the scorecard is incorrect, it's not accurate, and you'll always be unhappy. Having said that, don't be a doormat. I shed relationships all the time. On a regular basis, I decide I'm just not getting a lot out of this relationship. And I do a slow fade. Is that wrong? Well, that's what I do. But just decide what kind of person you want to be in the relationship and hold yourself to that standard. And just don't measure.