Sacrificing the Many Relationships for the Few
I know people who give and give of themselves, endlessly. And they never get back what they need. And it breaks me poor heart. We’re going to talk about how and why to not let that happen.
Something that happens in the financial world is that banks borrow short-term loans to maintain long-term solvency and debt obligations. They borrow and pay interest on short-term infusions of cash just so they can maintain their over-leveraged nightmare of a business model and squeeze out that extra 0.0048% of profit this quarter.
By all measures of common sense, it’s a stupid business model. Incredibly stupid. It means that the banks are more or less always on the verge of collapse. But… the globally-awful collapse of 2008 changed very little, and this is still a government-sanctioned way to do business.
I know people like this too. I know people who are always carrying their relationships forward on borrowed energy. They scrape together whatever meager energy and false enthusiasm they can to people-please or to be subservient to others… and then they pay for those loans by being even more exhausted and even more jaded. And, often, even more resentful. Resentful at everyone for continuing to burden them with the endless cascade of needs and wants and favors.
This is not a good way to live. If you keep saying “I’ll take care of my needs tomorrow,” you’ll end up with a whole lot of empty yesterdays. There’s a reason why, in case of emergency, flight attendants tell you to put on your own oxygen mask first before you help anyone else. Because if you don’t help you, you’re going to die trying to help others.
When you feel like you have to borrow energy from somewhere just to deal with the current relationship or relationships in your life, that's a sign that you are overextended. You're overextended into either A) too many relationships or B) relationships that aren't good for you. What this means is, relationships that don't return energy to you for the energy you put in. The input is much higher than the output.
Does this mean that relationships are transactional? Yes. Yes it does. It doesn’t mean you should be keeping score, but it does mean that both people need to be satisfied with the output. If not, something is broken.
You give in order to get. You take care of in order to be taken care of, and you invest in order to be invested in. If relationships weren't transactional, why would we have them? No matter how many stories we hear about saints and endless givers, that’s just not reality for most of us. We need to feel loved in the ways that make us feel warm and toasty and special. We have needs. We need to be valued.
If you find yourself putting time and effort into people who don't appreciate it, that means those people are not transacting with you. They're not trading high-quality time and energy with you.
Are there exceptions? Of course there are. Reciprocation, as it were, is not always required. Sometimes just appreciation is payment enough. And sometimes you do more giving because your relationship with someone is based on helping them. A mentee, a younger cousin, a low friend who needs someone to lean on for a while.
But for most of our relationships. reciprocation is the only healthy foundation.
At the very least, you cannot be the flower standing alone in the sun while all the plants around you get watered. That’s not noble, it’s silly. Chances are you’re going to wither and die. Or get resentful, which might be even worse.
You don't have a lot of time. In fact, when you look out over the horizon of your life, you have almost no time with which to do everything you want to do.
Think about it this way: I can read maybe 50 books a year. But there are probably about 20,000 books I'm going to discover over the course of my life that I want to read. Which means I'll have to sacrifice almost all of them so I can have just a few of them.
There are probably 500 places on Earth I'd like to visit. Almost all of those places will go unvisited and unenjoyed by my senses.
There are probably 1,000 people that I will meet in my life that I will want to have good, close relationships with. But I only have the mental and emotional bandwidth to be close to about 5 people. That's it. I will have to forgo all those other relationships that I want in order to have the best relationship possible with each of my special 5.
I had about 9 blog ideas this week, and had to choose one. I had to choose one that I thought would mean the most to you, and to me. The rest were sacrificed to make room for just one.
And so on and so on. If you think about all the experiences you wish to have in life, and then the resources you have available with which to have those experiences... you start to see how grossly inadequate those resources are. And you start to make some really hard decisions with your time and energy. And you start to be okay with making those hard decisions with your time and energy.
This lesson can come from perspective… and it can also come from pain. It can come from the pain of one too many hours invested into relationships that don’t nurture you. One too many people wasting your time. I hope this discussion helps you avoid learning this lesson through pain.
If somebody shows me that they don't value my time... thank you very much, have a nice day. No hard feelings. But I will not be wasting any further time on you. Because I've got too little of it, and you have just given me some of it back. I can now go invest that somewhere else.
This is also why I find it perennially weird that people are so insistent about family relationships. Cherish them. Oh my god, water them. There’s nothing more important in the world. As if you always, by default, have a tremendous amount in common with family and that they’re just always there for you.
Think through the list of your closest family members.
If you’re lucky, you’ve got one person who really, truly understands you. One. Most people don’t even have that. That’s why we look for soulmates. That’s why we look for friends.
If you’re incredibly, unbelievably lucky, you’ve got three or four people in your family who are genuinely supportive, present, and interested in your life. They ask you questions and they’re genuinely there for you. You can count on them. You know they’ll answer when you call. They take an interest in your success, and they invest in you.
And if you have one, two, maybe three people that you share a lot of real, deep interests with… that’s another bonus.
Beyond that, it’s just a bunch of people you have obligations to.
I’m not saying it’s bad to have obligations to family. What I’m saying is, first of all, it’s okay to admit that that’s what they are. Obligations. Things you wouldn’t do if you didn’t have to, because you really don’t feel all that close to the people involved. And second, that it’s okay to not be okay with that. If you have a family that always needs your help with random, distracting nonsense just because you’re family and you’re available… it’s okay to not be okay with that. That sound an awful lot like “calling in that favor” and then never checking the box that says “favor delivered.”
And another unfortunate truth that you’re better off facing before it hurts: sometimes you just don’t have anything in common with family. There really isn’t any good reason to invest in those relationships, and you’d be better off looking for friends and social groups that you do have a lot in common with. There’s nothing wrong with thinking this way. Because, again, the goal is to have relationships that nurture you. You have to be selfish — you can’t just be an obedient “family member” forever.
I’ve said this before: when you’re taking inventory of your relationships, strip away all the superficial mechanisms people use to maintain their bond with you. Money, family events, authority, guilt, and a forced sense of shared history. Strip away all those things, and look at the one variable that really matters: the time and energy that they personally invest into you. That’s the only real measure of a relationship. Everything else is noise.
It’s hard to navigate any relationship: family, friends and social circles, romantic partners. It requires you to understand what boundaries are (which most people sadly don’t), and observe and honor those boundaries, all while providing your love selflessly to the other person. You have to give to get. You have to give, and you have to get.
But you also have to know what it is you need in return to make you happy. And you have to be able to communicate that.
And if you can’t communicate that… a good start is at least giving your relationships the sniff test and being willing to say out loud when it isn’t working. Even if you can’t put it into words, you can still feel it. And then you can start a conversation.
Now here’s the tough love part:
If you aren’t getting what you need from a relationship, the first place you should look is at yourself. Always. Take your damn inventory. Figure out what you yourself are up to, and why. Figure out what it is you’re going after, and how you’re going about it. You’ll probably learn a lot of really unpleasant truths about yourself (and you might also learn some really encouraging ones). Start there.
And after that, you’re allowed to have a hard conversation with the other person. It doesn’t have to be accusatory, nor angry, nor confrontational. Just honest. Lay out your needs, lay out what you think you’re offering, and see how a compromise can be made. Often, a compromise can be made. At least it can with people who genuinely want to be in your life, and who value your time.
With those who can’t… you have just been told in no uncertain terms that this relationship isn’t one you should still be investing in. And maybe it’s nobody’s fault. Maybe you just weren’t made for each other. That happens with partners, and people who used to be best friends… it even happens between children and their parents. And that’s okay. You can’t feel bad about valuing your own time and your own love. Because if you don’t, nobody else is going to.
There’s an art to sacrifice. You have to do it in proportion to what you want back, or what you’re standing up for. You have to measure what the output is, and deliver the right-sized input.
If you want to have a particularly delicious dinner, all you have to do is eat a bland lunch. That’s easy.
But if you want to have outstanding relationships in your life, you have to put all of the non-outstanding ones on the chopping block — and that means almost all of your relationships. That’s how sacrifice works. It’s a measured art of horrible pain, that hopefully once in a while leads to you getting what you want and need.
And having what you want and need in a relationship is a truly incredible thing. It’s the best of what life has to offer.
When you find the ones who lovingly give and take with you, hang onto them.
Drink water and tell everybody they suck,
JDR
“It’s better to rest than to climb the wrong mountain.” - James Clear
If you’d like to keep reading, check out one of my favourite Square Man pieces: Happy Little Trees.