So we’ve all heard the points system. How men and women score points differently. I can’t remember which funny man said this first, and I can’t seem to get Google to cough it up either, so we’re just going to have to pretend I know who to attribute this to, and that everybody already knows what I’m talking about.

Kevin and I joke about points a lot. “Wow! You really did that!”, and he says, “So am I going to end the day with a positive total?”. I’ll tell him maybe! He’s already a point and a half in the right direction! He rolls his eyes and laughs. Sometimes I am flagrantly generous, and award more than one point for a thing also.  There have been occasions, not many, mind you, but some, where he has actually ended the day with five or six points!

(Please laugh, this is done entirely in jest, and if I were really awarding points, I’d lose count pretty easily because he really does rack them up FAST.)

Anyway we have some fun with the whole thing, and there is some truth to the way men’s and women’s brains count up meaningful gestures.

But something men just don’t get. Something the male relationship experts haven’t even figured out.

Women also award permanent points. Points that never go away.

It isn’t for the regular things. He doesn’t get this for complimenting her, or bringing her flowers, or taking her out, or even for doing the dishes one evening.

• He gets permanent points for getting up in the night when she’s had a hard day, and taking care of the kid that is throwing up.
• He gets them for hugging her every day when she cries in grief over a loss that he can’t fix, and that makes him feel utterly helpless.
• He gets them for not expressing irritation at her for an accident that totals HIS car, not hers.
• He gets them for doing the laundry year after year because the detergent and heat from the dryer makes her so uncomfortable she dreads it.
• He can even get them when he WRAPS her Christmas presents instead of just handing them to her in a bag!
• He gets them every time he apologizes without being asked.
• He gets them when he stops in the middle of what he is doing, to come and tell his wife thank you for packing his lunch that morning.
• He gets them when he sets out the fan as soon as the weather gets hot, so his wife won’t overheat.
• He gets them when, the FIRST TIME EVER, he turns around on the road to go back so she can look at the thing she spied beside the road.
• He gets them when the spiders in the bathroom disappear because he dispatched them without being asked.

They aren’t things anyone can really PLAN for. They are the acts that show the depth of character and love right in the middle of the chaos and crisis and frantic coping of real life. Things unexpected, and given just because he COULD, when nobody expected he WOULD.

Permanent points are never forgotten. They don’t disappear at the end of the day. They embed themselves in her heart, and serve as an anchor for love to grow on.

When she’s just HAD it with him, and isn’t sure its worth it, those are the things that she hangs onto, that pull her back.

When her friend says, “Why do you stay if it is that hard?”, she says, “That. That thing, right there!”.

“So what, exactly, IS that thing?”

“I can’t remember. But it was that thing. That one. Right there.”

The things that remind her that he really DOES love her, even when she’s forgotten exactly what it was that he did. A thing that CAN’T be forgotten entirely, even if she can’t remember completely.

Regular points, they reset at the beginning of the day. Usually. Unless he was in REALLY deep. Then they might not COMPLETELY (fair is fair, after all!). But usually they just reset, positive, or negative, he starts fresh each day.

But permanent points stick. Little bits of glue, bonding him to her heart, in spite of the day to day.