Do You "Give" to "Get" from Others?

I was thinking about my friend Richard this morning and how he’s a giving person—with no strings attached. Richard gives out of the pure goodness of his heart. He never expects anything back in return, and this is really healthy behavior.

His behavior is so different from what most of us codependents grew-up experiencing. We experienced lots of giving—with strings attached. What we learned about giving was this: You give to get.

I definitely learned from my family that the true purpose for giving to others was to ensure that you received something back in return. In other words, I learned that it wasn’t OK for me to give myself the really important things in life, like love, kindness and other forms of self-care. If I wanted those things, I needed to smother other people with them. Once I did, I could legitimately expect that others should then reciprocate and give me all of the love and respect that I refused to give to myself.

For much of my life, all of my giving to others was purely for the sake of getting from others. My attitude was pretty rigid. It went like this: I’ve bent over backwards to give love and attention to you, to do my best to pamper you and to try and fix all of your problems. Now, you need to do for me what I want. If you don’t reciprocate, then I think you suck and I am out of here. Of course most of my relationships ended in just this way, and I limped-off licking my wounds. I always saw myself as the innocent victim and the other person as someone who had used and abused me.

I realize now that I couldn’t have been further wrong. I was the abuser. I abused others by giving to them only to get from them. But worst of all, I abused myself by emotionally prostituting myself with many people. After all, I’m the one who bent over backwards to please/manipulate them expecting that they would then feel obligated to return my “love” (I use that word loosely here) and make me happy.

Looking back, I see how my behavior has changed so much in recent years thanks to recovery. I no longer give to get. I’m more like my friend Richard, who has helped me to see that it’s far better to love people for who they are and not for what they can do for you. Richard loves people without keeping a checklist of what they have or haven’t done for him. And now I do, too. How about you?