Couples Reciprocity Inventory

COUPLE’S RECIPROCITY INVENTORY
by Edwin L. Young, PhD
September 11, 1997
Revised November 21, 2009

Reciprocity, in this inventory, means the Tendency to Share Equally with Respect to All Things between Mates

On the following pages, you will find questions that relate to equality, fairness, sharing, openness, understanding, and reciprocity in your relationship.

In this inventory, issues concerning a couple’s sexual behavior, parenting, interactions with relatives, socio-economic status, or racial or ethnic background, or other issues that do not involve your style of reciprocating will not be addressed. Neither will questions be asked that relate to how long you have been a couple. No assumptions are being made or should be made concerning the couple is heterosexual or same sex.

As a Couples Coach or Marriage Group Counselor, you may want to conduct work using this inventory over several sessions of one hour but preferably two hours per session. You may want to encourage the group members to call you Coach. Also, you occasionally may want to try enlisting one couple from the group to act a co-leaders or to take one issue and lead the group in a discussion of it. You may want to adapt the guidance format to the developing status of the group as it progresses. While using this structured inventory as the primary basis for your guidance format, each group is different and flexibility and innovation is recommended.

If you are using this inventory in a ‘Couples Guidance Group’, before participants fill out the inventory, the Couples’ Coach may want to read all of the items aloud to insure that all participants understand and are primed to address the issues in each item. You may even want to pause and ask a participant or two to tell the group what they think is the meaning of each issue. Thorough clarification at the beginning will prevent participants from engaging in diversionary haggling over meaning while taking the inventory.

If the Coach is proficient in Mediation, otherwise known as Conflict Resolution, that skill might be helpful periodically throughout the sessions.

With respect to reciprocity, participants will be asked to estimate whether:

1. Whether you are fair on certain issues.

2. Whether you feel your mate is fair.

3. Whether you think your mate feels they are fair.

4. Whether you think your mate feels you are fair.

These issues and questions come up frequently in most relationships. These are issues that are often laden with strong feelings and emotions that are sometimes vocalized and sometimes suppressed.

The disagreements often are grounded in myths and beliefs about gender stereotypes, personality tendencies and personal identities, patterns present in family histories, and beliefs about occupational demands and prerogatives. People are seldom consciously aware of the origin and influence of their biases. The prior attempts of each party to address their problems in a rational manner may not have worked out too well. They may have tried to deal with underlying issues but with limited success. This being the case, there is little to no possibility to that they have reached rationally negotiated decisions.

Typically, there are charges and counter charges until someone throws in the towel. Since neither party can agree on a basic definition of the problem, these issues are seldom resolved. They can almost never arrive at a point where they can reasonably discuss how the issue should be assessed and therefore the problem is never negotiated nor concluded with an agreement with which both parties feel comfortable.

Using the following instrument, those nagging, and relationship destroying issues, can be brought into the open with disclosure of how each sees the problem and particularly how each really feels deep down about the problem. When these facets are out in the open, it may be possible to discuss the hidden origins of the problem from your side and the hidden biases that you suspect are present in the other person’s perspective. These are tough, typically emotionally delicate, problems, but they can only be solved if each is willing to be brutally honest with themselves and truly, and non-judgmentally, listen to the feelings and perspectives of their mate.

Therefore, you must first read and then respond to the questions using the five-point scale below the question.
On the scale:

1. ‘Comfort Zone’ represents no problem or comfort with the issue;

2. ‘Safety Zone’ means that you feel safe on that issue at this time;

3. ‘Risk Zone’ means that if you leave things as they are, there remains a risk to the quality or stability of the relationship;

4. ‘Danger Zone’ means that you anticipate a serious conflict or emotional blowup;

5. ‘Exit Zone’ means that you feel you have such a serious and unsettling problem that you have to clam up and perhaps even get away to some safer place. You may feel that this may be an issue that portends danger for the continuance of the relationship.

When you have each finished with the questions, use one supplied profile sheet to record each person’s profile with a note, in the space to the right or left, concerning the significance of the issue, from each party’s own point of view, for the relationship.

Any items that either party has cited as a significant issue should be carried over to the next page where both, together, will write an agreed upon assessment of the issue, followed by the terms or results of a negotiated solution to the problem.

When the problem issue arises again at home, both or one of you can return to your assessment and your agreement and use that as a starting point for trying to understand the issue better and come to a successful resolution in the current, real life situation. The more often you repeat this procedure at home, the more you both may become more expert at being able to talk such problems out and resolve them to mutual satisfaction.

Reciprocity

The Tendency to Share Equally with Respect to All Things between Mates

Circle the alternative below each item that reflects how you feel about that characteristic.

1. Your Transparency
Are you able to be completely and un-self-consciously open and revealing of yourself? ; Or, to the other extreme, do you feel you have to watch everything you say and feel completely stifled? When transparency is demanded, you want to exit. How comfortable do you feel about being transparent with your mate? Indicate your comfort with the degree of transparency you are able to have with your mate.