Lexicon ·
reciprocity
noun
- Stated meaning
- The balance of giving and receiving between partners, which a healthy relationship maintains.
- Operating meaning
- A balance that both partners are told to maintain and neither is supposed to be seen calculating.
- Origin
- From the norm of reciprocity in sociology, set out by Alvin Gouldner in 1960, later taught as a principle of persuasion, and used by relationship content as a standard a relationship should meet.
June 17, by text. After 4 days of silence I sent the longest message in the file, setting out the time, energy and driving I contributed and calling the result “an asymmetric investment.” The word was not used.
In 1960 the sociologist Alvin Gouldner set out a norm of reciprocity (opens in a new window) which, in its universal form, makes 2 minimal demands: people should help those who have helped them, and should not injure those who have helped them. Persuasion research later made it a principle of influence (opens in a new window). People are obliged to give back the behavior, gift or service they have received first, and anyone who gives first can count on it.
Relationship content took the word as a standard. One site (opens in a new window) defines it as the act of balancing giving and receiving, and sorts it into 3 types. A 2023 checklist (opens in a new window) defines it as the conscious effort to make a partner feel seen, heard and respected, and lists 5 signs that it is missing. One of the signs is “You are keeping score.”
Under load, reciprocity is a balance that someone has to strike and nobody is supposed to calculate. The standard needs both columns to be known, and the checklist treats knowing them as a symptom. The columns are kept anyway, privately, by whichever party suspects the balance is off. That party is the last one able to say so, because saying so produces the score.
The message is a reciprocity claim with the figures attached: 585 minutes of road and $932.62 across 6 dates, every proposal and every broken silence. It was accurate, and it left out the column that would have balanced it. She had asked for none of it, and the amount requested of her came to $0.00. The forms on this site carry a panel for the same calculation, the Reciprocity Index, which sets my figure beside hers, one row for each part of an evening, and counts how many balanced. It is the score the checklist calls a symptom, and I keep it.