How do you view friendship? I've always viewed it as a pendulum of give and take, where if I can help a friend out or brighten their day when they are down I'll do so and they'll reciprocate. I always thought that was pretty much standard operating procedure for how friendships work. Doesn't have to be to and fro every time but there will some back and forth.
But it seems like some folks view friendship as 'pay it forward.' I'm by no means against pay it forward and have been both the beneficiary and payer with it. But in that mode vs friendship I'm going to pay it forward one time unless its for charity or for an acquaintance who is not at friend level I may do stuff for them periodically even though I'm never getting back-atchas, *IF* I enjoy their company and I am rolling along well in my own life and have energy to give at the moment but I'm not going to dig into my well for them.
Some people in life are just takers and hardly ever give as far as I've ever seen and I have an easy time dealing with them. Surface pleasantness but I have a deaf ear and blind eye if they are hinting for favors because I dislike feeling used. And some people are just acquaintances, they may do things for their friends but I'm not in that circle and that is OK, I only do stuff with them that is mutually beneficial like L riding Lady. I get a little bit of help on the cost of feeding Lady but mostly Lady gets semi-regular riding which keeps her being a good little rookie horse plus I have some riding company which is nice even if its not advancing my horses' training or conditioning levels.
But there are people who are not takers and I witness or hear about them doing things for others all the time but it seems like they must have that pay it forward, or trickle down or ??? view, where they they give to their emotionally needy friends but are almost always taking from friend/acquaintances they view as higher on the hill OR they consider me just an acquaintance even after I've done things for them that go beyond what I'd normally do for someone on only an acquaintance level.
And I don't deal well with that. I feel like "what? Am I not nice to be around? Where did you get the idea I would not enjoy yada yada that you handed out to A B and C but not to me?" and so on. Then I feel like I'm being surly or paranoid or whatever but still there is that hump and I cannot just sweep it aside and in fact if I'm feeling guilty I'm even more inclined to want to just avoid even thinking about them.
They get shifted to "Well if I'm rolling along and have extra time and energy I'll go a little out of my way for you since I enjoy your company and the mild warm fuzzy feeling from being nice. But w/o feeling like there is some to and fro friendship I just have no motivation to try to summon energy or make time if its not just sitting there readily available.
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