The very idea of being selfless involves an understanding of what it means to be selfish.

Someone who is trying to be selfless will automatically use their idea of what it means to them, to be selfish and search for ways to be different. It results in making one’s idea of selfishness into the blueprint of what selfless means t that person, most often the opposite of what selfish meant.

Now, what it also does, is look at the idea of selflessness as something others should appreciate and should acknowledge. It’s the desire that others perceive how one has given up the things one would have wanted when in a selfish position.

Most often, that’s because in the relationship the person is making an effort to make things right for the other. Giving up something for someone else over a long period is at risk to become an argument to find oneself having been other people’s victims and giving them too much.

It’s forgetting oneself in the equation. It’s either only seeing the other who is receiving something or seeing only oneself who is giving to the other.

Instead of seeing both contribute to a common goal in the relationship, it has become something about either of both in the relationship.

The question is, can you see yourself co-create something with the other? And can you do so without making it a competition of who has given more?