A healthy relationship is clearly a partnership.  Partners cooperate, they support one another, and they depend on one another.  They do not compete.

When it comes to your relationship, that's exactly right.  I think there's nothing better than great banter between a man and woman.  I love watching a couple playing their games of verbal volleyball - teasing one another, swapping funny stories, joking about the other's eccentricities.  There's a great spark to their relationship, a feistiness that makes it fun.  That's not competition;  that's love with a sense of humor and with abundant spirit.

But competition, real competition, between partners can quickly turn a relationship into a battle of one-upmanship that can turn ugly.  Competitiveness means "score keeping".  You are in danger of turning what should be a mutually cooperative and supportive relationship into a fight for leverage and the upper hand.

Nothing short of selfishness is in control when one or both of you are trying to justify privileges or claim entitlements as opposed to focusing on what you can give.  In any relationship, you are either a giver or a taker.  Takers keep score to justify the taking.

How can you possibly expect to enjoy harmony in a relationship where one or both of you are fighting for leverage, power and control?  Solid relationships are built on sacrifice and caring, not power and control.

Oftentimes this score keeping leads to a kind of paranoia in which partners begin to worry about accepting a seeming gift or act of kindness for fear that the ultimate price of this "gift" will be much too high.

In a competitive relationship, there can never be any honest acknowledgment of shortcomings or mistakes made because that would be giving up valuable leverage.  Never mind that such an acknowledgment would be honest.  Defensiveness, deflection, and resistance to even the most constructive criticisms rules the day, all at the expense of the relationship.

Competitiveness between partners is an ill wind that can blow through an otherwise healthy relationship.  To keep the upper hand, you soon begin to put your partner down, to inflate your ego, and constantly try to maximize your deeds and minimize those of your partner.  You can't ever get to where you and your partner can agree to disagree and respect each other's positions.  Because you're keeping score, it's much more valuable if you can prove your partner wrong.

When this kind of attitude begins to dominate the relationship, you will never come to understand what it means to be loving.  You will never focus on the spirit of cooperation and coalition.

Here are some telltale warning signs that you can use to determine whether or not competition has replaced cooperation in your relationship:

• You tend to keep score of things your partner does, such as leisure time, outings with friends, hours with the children, and chores completed.

• You make sure your partner never gets the upper hand and never gets by with a "freebie".

• You bank "points" which are held over your partner's head for leverage.

• You make concessions in a negotiating fashion rather than offering them as a gift of support.

• You seldom if ever do something in support of your partner without making sure that he or she knows it, including a detailed explanation of the imposition it created for you.

• In any type of dispute or confrontation with your partner, you actively seek outside allies in the form of family and friends in an effort to shift the balance of power.

• You insist on having the last work or final act of defiance.