The Upper Hand; Creating Guilt and Gratitude: An Explanation

Gaining the upper hand (in your relationship) by creating guilt and/or gratitude? That sounds ridiculous. Of course it sounds ridiculous, every ingenious idea sounds absurd when it is first ushered from the mouth of the genius into the ears of the populace.
In any semi-healthy and moderately-functional relationship there is a checks and balances system of compromise, sacrifice, and reward. The goal of the “The Upper Hand” is to artificially tilt that balance in your favor. Be careful though, the scale of relationship equality is a fragile one. In all endeavors heretofore explained, you must proceed with tact, caution, and grace. Be ever watchful of your girlfriend’s responses and reactions to your mischievous ways.
How can you skew the system for your benefit? It’s in the fucking title, Einstein; you create guilt and gratitude. When you do something nice for/to your girlfriend, she feels gratitude. When your girlfriend fucks up, she feels guilty. Every guy knows the basics of creating gratitude; do something for your girlfriend that she wants you to do but you don’t actually want to do. For example, buy her something, take her out to a fancy restaurant, watch the Notebook, etc. The book on gratitude has pretty much already been written, so we’re going to focus on creating guilt.
BUT WHY!?!? Isn’t that mean? Shouldn’t a relationship be about trust and love and butterflies? (If you just said “butterflies” in your head before actually reading it, please turn off your computer.) Yes, like we already established, a relationship has that system of checks and balances. But everyone does their part to mess with it a little bit. Don’t believe me? Girls know that crying will soften up any angry boyfriend. Guys know that an unexpected gift will soften up any angry girlfriend. All we’re doing is extrapolating on that theory. We’re going to take it one, two, or maybe 14 steps further. Enjoy.

Novice Level: Opportunity presents itself; you take advantage and look for immediate payoff.
Advanced Level: Still opportunistic, but the process is longer and demands a bit more effort.
Expert Level: Create EVERYTHING. Significant preparation and dedication is required.