Care vs Fairness in Relationships: A Couples Therapist Explains the Conflict

Rana Khan
4 days ago
3 min read

Spring is in the air! The sun is out longer! Walking down Bloor Street in Toronto, I notice more people smiling. It seems like a weight is slowly being lifted and people are feeling lighter.

At the same time, darkness is looming. The news is hard to watch. There’s a lot going on in the world that feels very heavy. And that is undoubtedly impacting our home lives. A lot of people are experiencing tension at home.

A young couple having tension. Care vs Fairness in Relationships: A Couples Therapist Explains the Conflict

I’ve been thinking about a specific type of tension that shows up in many areas of life: the tension between care and fairness. Care asks us to be generous and responsive to the needs of others. Fairness asks us to think about boundaries, reciprocity, and what feels just.

I recently saw this tension described in a political context. In a newsletter, Paul Skallas framed the immigration debate in the United States as a conflict between generosity and gatekeeping. While the topic itself is contentious and nuanced, the underlying tension between care and fairness feels the same.

Of course, I can see how that might be taken as a sweeping generalization and I’m sure many nuances are missing, but what I’m most interested in is how two people who value different things can come together.

As a relationship therapist, I see this pattern of tension repeating itself quite a bit:

One person in a relationship is looking for care, the other is focused on fairness.
The person looking for care struggles to access their capacity for fairness, while the person seeking fairness struggles to access their capacity for care until they feel equilibrium has been achieved.

What it looks like in couples:

Partner A: “I’m exhausted. I carry so much at home.”

Partner B: “That’s not fair. I work 10 hours a day. I’m doing my part.”

Partner A is looking for care. They want to feel recognized and understood.

Partner B is protecting fairness. They want their contribution to be acknowledged.

Neither is wrong. But because care wasn’t offered first, fairness sounds like dismissal.

And because fairness feels ignored, the defensive impulse grows.

What it looks like in families:

Teenager: “You treat my brother differently.”

Parent: “That’s not fair. He needs more support.”

The teen is asking for care, for reassurance that they’re just as worthy of love.

The parent is defending fairness, explaining that there’s a larger context at play.

If the parent started with “It must feel like you matter less when I do that” they would be acknowledging the teenager’s need for care at this moment. From there, fairness can be explained without the teen being made to feel small.

A couple touching foreheads. Signifies the tension between care and fairness in relationships. — Photo credit: Jeremy Malecki

In the past, we’ve conceptualized this dichotomy as one person wanting to be right, or as one person being “emotional” and the other being “logical”. But, I think both of these are inherently limiting and can even be felt as judgmental. Instead, I wonder what difference it might make for us to view care and fairness as values that are being negotiated in relationships.

It’s a more relatable and more easily comprehensible model. We all know what it feels like to not be cared for. We all know what it feels like for something to be unfair. And in tensions that show up in relationships, one of the most important things is to understand what the other person is feeling. To connect on shared human experiences. When you’re able to relate to each other in this way, you’re no longer interested in winning the argument. You’re no longer seeing your partner as uncaring. You can recognize that they’re operating from a different set of values.

So, how can this help on a practical level?