<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # The accused partner's defense is also a... > The accused partner's defense is also a transaction, and it deserves its own autopsy rather than a rebuttal. _Nothing I do is ever counted_ is true, and it is true for a reason the man has not understood: the ledger is held by the one who was made to hold it, and whoever holds the ledger prices the other's labor. He surrendered the accounting on the day he decided that remembering was her department, and from that day his contributions were valued by the animal doing the remembering, at the rate that animal could afford to pay, which was nothing, because she was already insolvent. His invisible labor, and some of it is real, the money, the repairs, the driving, the calm, is invisible because he handed the ledger to someone he had already exhausted and then complained about the audit. {{Your work is uncounted because you gave the count away. Whoever holds the ledger sets the price of your labor, and you made her the ledger and then starved her.}} That is the symmetry the coaches will not sell, because it flatters no one: she became the administrator because he made failure cheap, and he became invisible because she became the administrator, and the two of them built the machine together over fifteen years and then paid a stranger to explain it. {{A marriage is two animals negotiating who will do the thinking, and the one who wins the negotiation loses the marriage.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The accused partner's defense is also a transaction, and it deserves its own autopsy rather than a rebuttal. Nothing I do is ever counted is true, and it is true for a reason the man has not understood: the ledger is held by the one who was made to hold it, and whoever holds the ledger prices the other's labor. He surrendered the accounting on the day he decided that remembering was her department, and from that day his contributions were valued by the animal doing the remembering, at the rate that animal could afford to pay, which was nothing, because she was already insolvent. His invisible labor, and some of it is real, the money, the repairs, the driving, the calm, is invisible because he handed the ledger to someone he had already exhausted and then complained about the audit. Your work is uncounted because you gave the count away. Whoever holds the ledger sets the price of your labor, and you made her the ledger and then starved her. That is the symmetry the coaches will not sell, because it flatters no one: she became the administrator because he made failure cheap, and he became invisible because she became the administrator, and the two of them built the machine together over fifteen years and then paid a stranger to explain it. A marriage is two animals negotiating who will do the thinking, and the one who wins the negotiation loses the marriage.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-accused-partners-defense-negotiation-loses-marriage ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->