Is it wrong to track data in your relationship?

MyLastBestChance · 2023-07-26T22:47:18+00:00

Pretty much the literal definition of “Keeping score” which is widely regarded as a fastpass to misery. 🤷‍♀️

Spiritual-Cicada9650 · 2023-07-26T22:46:45+00:00

I mean do what you want but if I came across my partner doing it I'd be weirded out if someone physically tracked the amount of times we had sex.

What wpuld your reasoning behind all of this?

NJFlowerchild · 2023-07-26T23:24:54+00:00

I wouldn't do it. That's neurotic.

bread93096 · 2023-07-26T23:10:46+00:00

Keeping data isn’t wrong. The fact that 3/4 of your chosen metrics are about sex is a bit sus.

TotalTravesty · 2023-07-26T22:57:14+00:00

To what end? “Improve the relationship” is vague. What needs to be improved? What goal are you looking to achieve?

If you have answers to those questions, don’t you think it would be more productive to just use your big boy words to get to that end instead of analyticking your way into the relationship you want?

This has been another edition of “People Are Not Computers, PPD…”

diaryofalostgirl · 2023-07-26T22:48:36+00:00

Yes, it's wrong. It turns the entire relationship into a job, a transaction. That's not what a relationship is. If you have to keep track, you're not in love.

Typical-Ad-1570 · 2023-07-26T22:46:48+00:00

Wrong? I guess not? Weird and break up worthy yes.

SianOiseau · 2023-07-26T22:53:51+00:00

It isn't wrong per se...but it's concerning. Mostly just because why would you do it? You usually can see what aspects of your life or relationships need improving without meticulously keeping the score. The only practical reason to keep the score is to show your partner that something is wrong, but if you have to do it, something is deeply wrong and there might be not really a point in doing so. If they don't believe your word, chances are high they won't believe your data either.

EugeneCezanne · 2023-07-26T23:15:56+00:00

Normal people don't do this. I don't know if it's wrong, on any sort of moral level; it's probably not healthy for your relationship. Besides, as you are both observer and participant, your data is tainted.

januaryphilosopher · 2023-07-26T23:19:10+00:00

I can't say there's anything immoral about it but it is weird. I don't see how you can use it to make any "improvements" without weaponising it against the losing party. If you feel you're getting the short end of the stick you can just say so without counting everything, and even then it's weaponising.

operation-spot · 2023-07-26T22:59:26+00:00

As a very analytical person I understand why you might do this but I think it would be very off putting to find out that my partner was doing this.

DapperDan1929 · 2023-07-27T02:17:57+00:00

Do you need to check out the dead bedrooms sub?

tired_hillbilly · 2023-07-26T22:50:16+00:00

I think it's ok, so long as you only start it when you already suspect problems. This kind of book-keeping will stress a relationship, but if it's already looking bad, what have you got to lose?

fakingandnotmakingit · 2023-07-26T23:11:49+00:00

What is it for?

There is absolutely no reason to do this unless: - you are unable to communicate with your partner - it feels weird having to monitor that and for that matter, being monitored.

Do what ever you want so as long as there's consent on both sides. But in this case it's not a matter of "wrong" it's matter of if your partner would run for the hills

Zabadoodude · 2023-07-26T23:00:21+00:00

Not wrong, but definitely strange and off-putting.

Ainsleygz · 2023-07-26T23:00:32+00:00

Isn’t it normal to keep track of things in your head? I don’t see why writing it down has any purpose

Perfect-Resist5478 · 2023-07-27T03:12:02+00:00

My grandparents, who were married for 71 years, had a very simple secret to success.

Do nice things and don’t keep score.

My sister is a tracker- her calendar will have her 22min cat nap and her 8 minute shit. Every single minute of her day is cataloged. If you want to and can keep track of all that shit without it being weaponized, more power to you. I have a hard time believing that if he marked down every time he tried to initiate sex and was rejected, and she countered with every orgasm he got that she didn’t, anything positive would come from it

SlowEffective8146 · 2023-07-27T04:48:02+00:00

I mean if it ever got to this point in a relationship, it's already over. It shouldn't ever be like this.

XYZRGCMYK · 2023-07-27T06:13:04+00:00

No. The answer is no. It is not wrong. Anyone who tells you otherwise is mistaken, immoral or stupid.

Preme2 · 2023-07-27T02:20:51+00:00

Women don’t want to track data because it will prove men do more when factoring in work, chores and childcare. They like to pretend they’re doing everything, but it probably won’t be the case. Better to live in delusion… women natural habitat.

TotalTravesty · 2023-07-27T01:06:25+00:00

If there’s an 80/20 split in what’s supposed to be a 50/50 split in housework then the 20 is damn sure going to bring it up. This is what I mean: people are going to express when they’re unhappy. What’s more likely to happen is you’re going to find some kind of 55/45 split and think there’s a problem when in reality nobody cares about slight discrepancies because we’re human.

Gonna be honest: “Do we have a problem that we’re not aware of?” is an extremely weird question to ask and is more likely to make the other person think there’s a problem than revealing any actual problem. Communication = “There’s something going on I’m not happy about,” not “Let’s take time to perform an unnecessary diagnostic as if we don’t have our entire event-free history together to go off.” It’s two people, not a person and a car. Language is a beautiful thing.

Clementinequeen95 · 2023-07-27T14:13:43+00:00

This is weird as hell

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rowthyme · 2023-07-26T22:59:28+00:00

WRONG

KayRay1994 · 2023-07-26T23:01:40+00:00

Depends on what you’re doing imo - some things are fine to track (ie. chores, if it helps y’all stay more organized, big promises as well since…. well, they’re promised) - things like initiating sex, how often its turned down, who plans dates, gifts and so on is where things really start to get messy and where things could fall into places like weaponizing information, using gestures/emotions to manipulate and so on. Its fine to notice trends and talk about them, but to literally track is obsessive and could lead to controlling places.

stats135 · 2023-07-26T23:03:53+00:00

There's nothing wrong with that. In fact most people track data. They may not have it all documented in a spreadsheet, but they at least have ballpark figures within their minds.

Icy_Ordinary2025 · 2023-07-26T23:07:37+00:00

What would you use the data for?

Mentathiel · 2023-07-26T23:59:45+00:00

Technically not. Data is just data, how you're using it can be immoral, but not the data itself.

The only thing I can think of with regards to data collection itself that could be a bit questionable is whether your partner knows about it. I don't think it's really ethical to track things without consent this maticulously, I don't exactly know why, but it crosses some boundary in terms of transparency and honesty.

It's weird at first to see the idea, but tbh personally I would be open to some of these to troubleshoot some problems. I would downright break up with a person if they demanded that we do it so they could prove their point or some shit if we were vehemently disagreeing. But if we had a more peaceful team-spitted disagreement or if there was a problem but we weren't sure where is it coming from, tracking occurrences can definitely help you see a pattern. I would also break up if this was requested in absence of any issues as a preventative measure, nothing immoral with that, I just don't like it.

Also, I would be really fucking careful with the sexual ones. That's actually another thing that could maybe be unethical about data collection itself. Maybe it's not your fault, but if your partner has people-pleasing tendencies for example, just seeing the data itself could be a strong pressure point for them causing them to have sex that they don't want to have to alleviate misplaced feelings of guilt. Tracking initiating is fine and useful imo, but tracking rejections is very sensitive. I wouldn't say it's inherently immoral, but I'd say you're treading dangerous ground in the sense of risk of trauma. And it's a bit useless, if you have mismatched libidos you can easily tell by one of you being sexual unsatisfied, you don't need any data to find that out.

Avakaaya-karam · 2023-07-27T00:56:06+00:00

Mostly the ones who have the privilege are the ones with more options in a relationship well make mostly women are the ones saying no to such things. Yet majority of women are experts in keeping track of such data like what did he do fir valentine's 5 years ago, how much effort should I keep that is equal to his, how many times he took me out on a date etc.

It's not the data that's wrong, it's what the data is used for that decides whether it is correct or not.

yvaN_ehT_nioJ · 2023-07-27T02:11:25+00:00

Who even has the energy for this??

MistyMaisel · 2023-07-27T03:26:07+00:00

It would depend on your moral and ethical framework clearly. Per example, one can easily use the famous "love is" direction in the Bible to say that this gathering of data is a violation of the direction to keep no record of wrongs.

By most standards is it like baby punching morally wrong or unethical? No, it does not seem to be a higher order violation. On the other hand, that is typically quite a low standard by which to judge actions. Almost anything seems good and upstanding when compared with say murder.

I would personally say it seems like a lower order violation. It's distasteful and offends every loving sensibility and bone most of us have in our body. It removes the spontaneous and sexiness from romance and sex. It makes all involved nightmarishly and coldly self aware of themselves as lovers. It turns a broken or kept promise into a number and a traffic violation rather than the either not so deep or deep impact. All of this is affront of the very concept of deeply loving someone which almost by its nature demands us to be aware of our connection, promises, and service towards them. To attack such a cornerstone of humanity strikes me as clearly immoral and unethical in an emotional and aesthetic sense.

Made all the worse if it is claimed to be in service of that love as no one reasonable can actually imagine it improving upon anything. It is most likely to lead to discord and disharmony, not improvement.

If I found out my man was doing this, it would not improve our relationship. It would harm it.

ta06012022 · 2023-07-27T04:40:41+00:00

Wrong? I don’t know.

Weird? Yeah definitely.

Novadina · 2023-07-27T04:51:12+00:00

I guess it depends on why. What would you do with the info, exactly? And what conclusions are you reaching with some of these… like for example I know with sex with my partner I have had waaaayyy more orgasms than him, I don’t need to track it (nor would I even know how, I’m not gonna start writing in a log when things are start getting good lmao), it’s just how our biology works. What conclusion could you reach from that or how would anyone use that info - especially an exact number? And don’t you think that would be pretty off-putting of your partner pulled out a notepad in the middle of fucking to add a tally?

LeeroyX · 2023-07-27T05:22:23+00:00

I don’t think it’s wrong as such, but I think it needs to be transparent and consensual to avoid hurt and perceived intrusion on personal or relationship privacy.

I think you need an agreement on:

what is being tracked
where the information is being stored
who can add, adjust, dispute or add to the information being tracked or recorded
by what methods the information is collected or recorded
what the information is being used for
who the information is being shared with
how long the information will be held
how the information will be disposed of
under what circumstances the information will be disposed of
under what circumstances the tracking will stop

And under no circumstances will rules change without mutual agreement. This is off the top of my head so there is probably more conditions to consider.

TidyMess123 · 2023-07-27T05:31:27+00:00

Here’s the thing - there is nothing wrong of keeping yourself mindful of the dynamics you listed, and there is nothing wrong with using that mindfulness to help improve the relationship, and to address issues when one of these data points swings widely to one partner rather than the other. However, in order for these data points to actually be detrimental to a relationship, they will skew beyond a point where you actually have to keep track or tally of occurrences, the differences will be so blatantly obvious that they can’t not be addressed. If you’re having to keep actual tally’s of everything in order to become aware of a disparity, than the disparity is not enough to be a legitimate concern. In a relationship that lasts any significant length of time, you will naturally see ebbs and flows of the amount of disparity in these metrics between partners, simply because of ebbs in flows of stress outside of the relationship impacting these kids if things. For example, in the long term over a few months or even years, things could be pretty equal between partners, but let’s say one of the partners has a family member pass away, you’re likely to see a temporary disparity that is the outcome of the stress of loosing a loved one. So I’m addition, if you are keeping track, it needs to be over the long term as well, not just for certain snippets of time.

BeneficialRush4171 · 2023-07-27T06:11:32+00:00

If the other person seems to uncharacteristically lose motivation or fall into bad habits, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to address it. However keeping score itself will just feel antagonizing to them. At the end of the day, if something is lacking and it starts to bother you, there are ways of communicating that without appearing like you were going through the effort to bring up something negative. That would be unhealthy for the relationship.

MiddleZealousideal89 · 2023-07-27T06:49:02+00:00

I don't think normal people do this. I'd only do it if my partner claimed they've been doing X chores consistently, so I might track how often they actually do them to show them if they aren't, in fact, doing them as often as they say. However, that's not a healthy relationship dynamic. Everyone keeps a vague mental list of some of these things, like chores, if any promises were broken, if their partner's libido has changed, to an extent but keeping actual data on it really does seem like that person is just trying to make a list of their partner's ''failures'' and try to hold it over them, even if it's under the guise of ''reflecting on the relationship''.

Is it wrong? Eh, you could do it if you want but I don't think it's going to end well for you.

-Shes-A-Carnival · 2023-07-27T10:30:18+00:00

it's not wrong, its mentally ill. why on earth would anyone do this unless they were planning to use it to keep score

Meo_cute · 2023-07-27T11:45:01+00:00

It's not morally wrong, but still very strange.

No_Length_6997 · 2023-07-27T13:36:16+00:00

It may not be “wrong” but I think it makes you take a back seat in the relationship. If you want to change something you need to actively pursue the change. Rather than let life treasure it’s course and track stuff.

Ohmaygahh · 2023-07-27T15:15:08+00:00

This reminds me of an episode of "Mating Grounds" with Max Tucker and Dr. whatever the fuck his name was.

In the middle of the episode, Max goes on an autistic, unhinged rant expressing his "ick" for men that remember specific details about women they are sexually seeing.

I find that it so bizarre that the majority of women, and some men, would find it weird that a guy who is exchanging sexual fluids with, he isn't allowed to jote things down about.

Sex really is just supposed to be momentary, meaningless thing to be enjoyed and not thought about. It's so base, primitive, animal like.

Having said that, some of your data saving is weird to me. How much chores? That sounds pathetic. Sex turned down and why? Really OCD autistic. Number of orgasms achieved? I'm getting Dr. Hannibal Lector vibes...

Major promises kept/broken? A good one, very relevant.

Relative_Bee8356 · 2023-07-27T17:05:14+00:00

The only time I've really tracked anything like this was in a relationship where I felt neglected sexually and knew he would be dismissive if I brought it up. I don't think it was "wrong" to do that but gosh it sure was a symptom of multiple things wrong with that relationship.

I've also gone through phases where I've kept a journal. I wasn't "tracking" anything intentionally but it definitely made me more aware of certain patterns.

Additional-Run-6026 · 2023-07-27T21:17:28+00:00

I don't think it's wrong, but you probably ought to have some idea of the purpose.

I think chores are the most likely to be worth considering tracking.

You aren't likely to forget if a major promises is kept or broken.

The other things can probably be dealt with at the time, so they don't become problems.

Philoso_rapture · 2023-07-27T22:12:18+00:00

It sounds like most people here are uncomfortable with the idea, but can't quite explain to you why it would be "wrong" to do so. I think the question that you're asking is well worth discussing, but ultimately my own conclusion from thinking about this abstractly and via my own relationships is quite similar to the consensus. If I may:

The frontal part of our brains are responsible for higher-level cognition, constructing models of the world, abstract thinking, complex problem solving. The posterior part of our brains are more responsible for how you feel, related to your comfort and emotional levels. When you move thinking from your posterior cortex to your frontal, you can better "control" your body--i.e. your emotional cortex feels fear of a spider, but your frontal cortex recalls all the reasons you're safe. I'm sure you know of this (and my explanation is not perfect, it's a complex topic).

The thing is, many qualities that people seek in their deep meaningful relationships are related to your posterior brain. Sexual arousal, feeling accepted, being wrapped in a loving hug, being present and in the moment--these are all sensations that can only arise when you are comfortable enough, and your posterior brain is activating.

By "keeping score" or over-optimizing your relationship, you are trying to move much of this more "automatic" brain computation to your frontal cortex, where you have more control. On the surface it could be a good idea--let's orgasm more, and be nicer to each other, and give each other more of what we like.

But, by repeatedly keeping your frontal lobes alert (and if you overemphasize this "tracking" to your partner, their frontal lobes will be alert as well), you will dominate your posterior brain which was responsible for feeling all the love and sexual desire in the first place. The very act of thinking too hard during your intimate moments, will pull you out of those intimate moments altogether! The best sex doesn't involve calculating the best time/best moves, not because there aren't best times and best moves, but because the precursor to these good times and moves involves both partners being in a relaxed state where their frontal cortex isn't working too hard.

I'm not a huge believer in drawing hard lines on morality or ethics, since everyone's life has led them to different core beliefs. But if your relationship is to have real emotional substance, as opposed to more fungible relationships in your career/acquaintances, I think that any form of "keeping score to optimize" will, over time, detract from the real love and attraction that you hoped to optimize in the first place.

BoxOfBoxedUpBoxes · 2023-07-28T00:19:31+00:00

Is it wrong? On its own, I’d say no so long as both parties are aware and expressly ok with it.

But, putting aside the idea of the data being “weaponized” or whatever, I feel like this would make the relationship feel more sterile, like another day at the office. Tracking chores I can understand somewhat, but the minute you tell me we’re tracking sex and intimacy metrics is the minute it becomes completely undesirable. No way am I going to be focused on anything but the knowledge that my “performance” will be recorded, analyzed, and later reviewed, which would completely nuke the mood.

houstongradengineer · 2023-07-28T00:59:12+00:00

Different for different data/purposes. If you're tracking orgasms because you want to make her 500th special by going to Bora Bora, that's kinda sweet and I wouldn't call it wrong. If you track the time you spent washing dishes down to the minute, that sounds exhausting and unfulfilling and I can't imagine there would be a RIGHT reason for all of the hassle. Expecting your partner to track things down to the minute for you is far worse than the worst boss I ever had, so I defo think that would be wrong.

bluestjuice · 2023-07-28T20:04:20+00:00

I mean, I’m a total data nerd and I really enjoy that this is a totally different question from usual.

I don’t think it’s immoral. It’s definitely weird, haha. Like others have pointed out the slant and impact could be different depending on what items you choose to record. I am a little sus about the idea of taking super detailed stats without informing the other person that this was happening, though - at least I feel that they’d have a right to be weirded out.

Full disclosure, I do track sex encounters as part of my general fertility tracking program. And I am, as mentioned, a data nerd who also tracks many other things, like my own mood, diet, exercise, reading, etc. I don’t keep track in a detailed way of who does which chores or how often, though, or who initiates or declines sex, etc.

BioNipple · 2023-07-28T20:46:24+00:00

If any guy breaks up with you for that you are better off alone.

Ppd has lately been infested by fuckbois who need a safe space in between all the chimpanzee-like sex they engage in, only to realize no one cares about them.

ore2ore · 2023-07-30T16:41:42+00:00

Right or wrong, whatever suits you.

For our relation we wouldn't want to waste the time for collecting and analysing the data. Even after 15 years it can still be better used in some activities together, Like playing board games or do things in the bedsheets

Is it wrong to track data in your relationship?

Comments

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Title	Is it wrong to track data in your relationship?
Author	Windmill_flowers
Upvotes	15
Comments	219
Date	July 26, 2023 10:43 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/15akaqg/is_it_wrong_to_track_data_in_your_relationship/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/is-it-wrong-to-track-data-in-your-relationship.1226600 https://theredarchive.com/post/1226600