It's different between lovers. In addition to the need for balance, love also comes into play. This means that as soon as I have received something from someone I love, I give them more than the same or equal. This makes the other person feel indebted to me again. But because they love me, they also give me more back than the balance demands. In this way the exchange of giving and taking between the lovers grows and with it the depth of their relationship.

A disorder is: I give less than I took. This also applies vice versa, if I give more to the other person than they want or are able to give back.

Many consider it a special love when they shower the other with their love. For example, when they try to give them more than they can cope with. In this way they bring the harmony in their relationship out of balance. Afterwards, the other person has a difficult time restoring the balance.

What is the result? The other person, who has been given too much beyond the balance, will leave the relationship. Deviation from the balance causes the opposite of what the giver had hoped for.

Couple relationships in which one gives much more than one takes must fail. So do those in which one takes more than one is willing or able to give. For example, when the person is disabled. However, there is also a balance when the disabled person recognizes that they have to take more than they can give back and, instead of making demands, they thank the other person from their heart. Gratitude also serves as a balance.

We cannot always balance by giving something of equal value back to the other.

Who can give something equal back to their parents?
Or to a teacher who has helped them for years?

We feel a lifelong debt to them. Many want to escape the pressure of this debt by refusing to take more of it. They make themselves poor because the pressure of this debt becomes too great for them. They become refusers of life instead of taking it to the fullest.

There is an easy way out to balance in a beautiful, fulfilling way: Instead of giving something back, we pass it on to others. Especially to our own children, but also in many other ways in the service of life. Everyone feels well, the givers and the takers.

We also have the need for balance, often even more so when others have harmed us. Then we also want to harm them, in the sense of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Strangely enough, both sides are waiting for this balance. Not only the victim to whom something has been done, but also those who have done something to them, and in this sense have become guilty towards them. The victim is looking for revenge. The perpetrator wants to get rid of their guilt by atoning for it.

But what happens in reality? Does it come to a balance? Or does the victim usually do something worse to the perpetrator? What are the consequences? 

The perpetrator feels: This went too far. So they search for compensation from their side, this time as the victim. To compensate they do something bad to the other one again. Often more than it serves the balance. In this way the balance increases in the bad way. Instead of loving each other, they become enemies.

The need for balance even in the bad way is insuperable. We must give in to it. If we try to suppress this need, we endanger the relationship.

By forgiving, the other comes out of the relationship from equal to equal into a relationship from inferior to superior. Real forgiveness can only be achieved mutually. For example, by both not returning to the past, not even in thought. It can be over forever.

The easiest way to get out of the vicious circle of more and more mutual injuries would be for one person to hurt the other a little less instead of hurting the other the same or even more. In other words: they too take revenge, but this time with love. Then the exchange of giving and taking can begin anew in the good way. Usually both have become more careful and are more attentive towards each other. As a result of this balance, their love has deepened.

Deep in our soul there is an archaic will to survive from the time of human development, when the survival of one's own group depended on destroying the other group that attacked them. None of the other group was allowed to survive. Later wars were also fought in this way. It was not only about defeating the other group or fending off its attack, but, in order to be protected against it, to destroy it to the last member.

We find an example of this in the Bible when God commanded the Israelite tribes, when they invaded Canaan to conquer it: "You shall kill them all, men, women, children and the cattle, as a holocaust for Yahweh." Modern examples of this are the attempts to exterminate an entire people, the so-called genocide, and the attempt of the National Socialists in Germany to exterminate the entire Jewish people, including all children. The will to exterminate in us is kept in check by the rule of law and public order. It protects us against the will to exterminate of others, and protects them against our will to exterminate. As soon as public order collapses, it breaks out again unchecked. 

How does this will to destroy manifest itself in our relations? For example, what goes on in our soul when a partner has hurt us? Do we only want to hurt them in the same way in order to balance it again? Or do we often even wish them death because of a little thing inside and want to destroy them? The will to exterminate is the background and the driving force for the escalation of many harmless injuries in couple relationships.

When we know about the power of the will to exterminate within us and remember its origin, we become more cautious. We balance something harmless with something harmless and prefer to balance with a little less than with a little too much.