I don’t mean this sexually. I want to be useful to the people I care about. More than that, I am willing to be used by them, even taken advantage of, if it means they can benefit from me without feeling that they owe me anything in return.
I want people to feel completely comfortable taking from me. I want them to ask for my help, accept what I offer, and make use of whatever I can provide without feeling responsible for my wellbeing, my feelings, or the balance of our relationship. I do not want my generosity to become an obligation they must repay, nor do I want them to feel that accepting something from me means they must give me affection, attention, or intimacy in return.
If someone I care about benefits from my presence, I can justify what I give through their interests alone. I do not need them to become closer to me, appreciate me more, or even think of me particularly fondly. I would still want to contribute to their lives if I knew that I would receive nothing relationally in return.
I am not saying this because I believe every unequal relationship is inherently good, or because I necessarily enjoy being mistreated. I do not particularly desire expendability for its own sake. Rather, I am willing to accept it as the cost of ensuring that the people I care about never feel obligated to me. I would rather be someone they can freely use than someone whose needs, sacrifices, or expectations make them feel responsible for giving something back.
I want to be useful to others, but I do not believe that their willingness to care for me is sufficient justification for my receiving that care.
When someone makes an effort for me, gives me something, shows me affection, or goes out of their way to help me, I do not experience the act as something I can simply accept. I feel indebted to them. The debt does not disappear when they tell me there is no debt. In some ways, that makes it worse: I have received something they were under no obligation to give, and I cannot identify what justifies my having accepted it.
I do not believe they have necessarily wronged me by giving, or that I have deceived them into doing so. The problem, as I understand it, is that I have permitted myself to receive something I cannot justify receiving. I can understand why another person might choose to be kind to me without accepting that their choice resolves the question of whether I ought to have accepted their kindness.
I do not consider receiving anything beyond what is necessary to maintain my ability to function adequately justified. A person needs food, sleep, and basic care to remain alive; those things have an identifiable purpose. But what justifies receiving affection, gifts, consideration, or someone’s time when those things are not necessary for my continued functioning? Why should another person’s willingness to give be enough to establish that I should receive?
This is not simply a matter of believing that I must earn everything through hard work. Repaying someone with an equivalent favour would not necessarily resolve the problem, either. If anything, I sometimes prefer an explicit debt because it is at least transactional: I know what I owe and can discharge it. The more difficult kind of debt is the one attached to a relationship, where I cannot determine what repayment would mean without turning affection into an exchange.
My difficulty is not that I believe people are incapable of caring about me. It is that I do not regard their willingness to care about me as sufficient justification for receiving that care.
I do not believe I have to be actively harming someone for my presence to feel unjustified. I regard myself as occupying space that would be better reserved for someone who has a legitimate claim to it. I regard accepting someone’s time or affection as an imposition even when they freely offer it, even when they are not inconvenienced, and even when they assure me that they want me there. The absence of demonstrable harm does not, in itself, resolve what I perceive as a question of justification.
Consequently, I do not permit myself to ask for things from people simply because I want them. I do not want to test whether they care, make them prove that I matter, or turn my desire for closeness into a demand they must answer. I recognise that they are free to choose whom they want around. But I also impose a restriction upon myself: I do not believe that wanting something from another person is sufficient reason to allow myself to receive it.
I do want to be sought out, rather than merely approached when I can help. I want people to initiate conversations with me, to enjoy my company when I have nothing to offer, and to show affection that is not a response to something I have done for them. I want to be included because my presence is wanted, rather than because it is convenient. I want to be known as a person, not simply appreciated for what I can provide.
I see forms of intimacy between my friends and other people that I have rarely, if ever, experienced to the same degree in my own relationships. I have invested considerable time and effort in those relationships, but I have often felt that I am appreciated more readily for what I do than sought out for who I am. Even as my capacity to contribute has diminished, I have become increasingly uncertain of my place in other people’s lives.
I do not believe that greater intimacy would resolve the underlying problem. Even if I were more frequently sought out, included, or cared for, I would not suddenly regard myself as justified in receiving those things. Greater closeness might soften the alienation I experience, but it would not eliminate it. I would still have to contend with the same convictions about what I am entitled to receive, what I can justify accepting, and whether another person’s willingness to give is sufficient grounds for my receiving.
I do not believe my friends owe me greater intimacy because of what I have done. Time invested, favours given, and loyalty demonstrated do not entitle me to affection. I consider it wrong to treat my generosity as a claim upon another person.
But I apply this conclusion to myself in a way that goes beyond respecting other people’s freedom. Because I am not owed affection, I do not consider that fact alone sufficient to justify wanting it. Because nobody is obligated to choose me, I do not regard my desire to be chosen as a reason that I should be. Because another person is free to give without being obligated, I want to ensure that they never feel obligated to me; yet when they give freely, I still regard my own acceptance as requiring a justification that their willingness does not provide.
The asymmetry is fundamental to how I understand these relationships. I can justify giving to someone because I regard their interests as important independently of what they might do for me. I do not extend the same reasoning to myself. I can recognise another person’s needs, desires, and interests as sufficient reasons to give them consideration, while refusing to treat my own desires as sufficient reasons to receive it. Their willingness to give does not settle whether I should receive, and my desire to receive does not settle whether that desire is justified.
I recognise that this can resemble low self-esteem, people-pleasing, codependency, or an attempt to earn affection through usefulness. Those interpretations may explain aspects of my behaviour, but I do not consider them sufficient explanations for the entire pattern. I am not simply hoping that enough generosity will eventually make someone love me. I can genuinely want to give without expecting that outcome. Nor do I regard giving as a bargain whose unspoken price is reciprocation.
The more fundamental issue is that I do not regard myself as having the same standing to receive that I readily recognise in others. I can acknowledge that desire is not the same as entitlement, but I do not consider that distinction sufficient to establish that the desire is justified. I can know that another person has freely chosen to care for me and still reject their choice as a sufficient reason for my receiving that care.
I do not know whether this is generosity taken to an extreme, an aversion to imposing on others, a moral standard I apply asymmetrically to myself, or something more fundamental in how I experience relationships. I also cannot confidently distinguish how much of my willingness to be used comes from a genuine commitment to others’ interests and how much comes from my refusal to grant myself permission to receive from them.
What I do know is that I want to give without creating obligations, while I experience receiving as an obligation even when nobody else intends it to be one. I want others to be free to take from me without having to consider what they owe me, but I cannot extend that same freedom to myself when someone chooses to give. I do not believe that another person’s kindness automatically makes my acceptance justified, and I do not believe that the absence of an obligation to reciprocate makes the experience of receiving any easier.
I also want to be wanted, but I do not regard that desire as a claim upon anyone. I can respect another person’s freedom to choose while still experiencing the distance between being useful to someone and being someone they actively want in their life. That distance is alienating, and greater intimacy might lessen it. It would not, however, resolve my underlying conviction that I cannot justify receiving what another person freely offers me.
I do not want this reduced to a simple narrative about secretly expecting repayment, lacking confidence, or needing to learn to accept compliments. I am interested in how other people understand this distinction between giving and receiving, particularly when the person giving does not expect anything in return but nevertheless finds it difficult to accept care from others. I am also interested in whether the reasoning itself is coherent: whether the freedom to give can be respected without granting oneself permission to receive, and whether recognising that nobody owes me anything can reasonably lead to the conclusion that I should not allow myself to want anything from them.
I am not asking for reassurance that I deserve everything I want, nor am I asking anyone to agree with my interpretation of myself. I want perspectives that take the reasoning seriously, including those that challenge its assumptions rather than simply dismissing the experience behind them.