LIBRA asks: Is it ethical to seek and maintain a relationship where I know I will need much more care and grace than I can possibly return?
Good Paul says:
Although we often say the opposite, it is simply a fact that people are not equal. We have different talents and abilities. We have different needs.
Even if you just think about one person; right now as I’m writing this I don’t need anything from anyone. In about ten minutes I will need a drink of water, though, because I’m starting to feel a little thirsty. When I am sick I need a doctor, or if I’m less sick I need someone to take care of me. When my brother passed away I needed my wife to comfort me and be patient with me as I grieved. Sometimes that grief looked like laziness or moping or snappishness. Sometimes I have been lazy or mopey or snappish without having a personal reason to explain it, I just had a bad day and felt crummy.
My point here is that what I need from people is not the same from moment to moment. Sometimes that’s because of my situation, sometimes it’s because of my choices, sometimes it’s because of my temperament, and sometimes it’s not clear why. And the same dynamic exists between people. Maybe I am far needier than my wife. Maybe I’m far less needy. Maybe that dynamic changes from year to year or decade to decade; maybe it doesn’t. Some people have a lot of patience and grace to give; others have less.
If you need care and grace, that doesn’t mean it’s unethical to seek a relationship. But it does mean you need to be honest with yourself and with the other person in that relationship about what your needs are and what you anticipate they will be in the future. Maybe the person you are seeking a relationship with will see your needs as a deal-breaker; you’ll need more than they can give. That’s sad, but it’s their right to choose. Or maybe what they need is to give care and grace. Maybe they won’t believe you, and will assume that you’ll change, then get frustrated when you don’t and the relationship will end unhappily. Maybe you will grow and change, either because your circumstances do or because time changes us all in ways we don’t always expect.
The point of all these maybes is that as long as you’re not being deceptive or manipulative it is absolutely good to seek a relationship, no matter how much care you think you will need or how much you think you’re capable of providing, because the other person is free to decide if that dynamic is one they’re willing to accept or not.
I am a little concerned, though, Libra, about your characterizing of yourself as needing much more care and grace than you can possibly return. Without knowing the details, I see a whole range of possible situations, all of which give me some pause. My first concern is that there are many kinds of care, and I don’t want you to sell yourself short. You may never be able to reciprocate a specific kind of care; maybe you’re financially vulnerable, so you’ll never be able to offer to pay for dinner. Maybe you are physically disabled and need practical physical care. You’ll need your partner to physically carry you sometimes, but you will never be able to physically carry them. But I hope that in neither of these (or any other hypothetical) circumstances you would think of yourself as someone with nothing to give just because there are some things you can’t give. It’s important to recognize which of your partner’s needs you are able to meet, and how you are able to extend care and grace and love to the people in your life who need it.
The other possibility, though, is that when you say you can’t possibly return grace and care what you really mean is that you’re not willing to. I trust this isn’t you, Libra, but I want to address reality, because there are people who think things like “I’m just selfish. That’s who I am” or “well I have have temper and that’s just a fact about me.” If it is in this sense that you mean you won’t be able to return grace to someone you want to have a relationship with—if you mean that you have decided not to work on your flaws, not to offer someone your best, that you are wondering whether it’s ok to enter a relationship with someone while knowing that you intend to take advantage of or mistreat the other person then of course it is not!
But I am confident that’s not you. If instead, you’re wondering whether you deserve to be loved then the answer is a resounding “yes”.
Bad Paul says:
The important thing to remember, Libra, is that all relationships are fundamentally transactional. Don’t enter a relationship with anyone—and I mean romantic or otherwise—unless you are giving and receiving equally. If someone buys you a coffee you must buy them a coffee, obviously. If they forgive you for being rude once you should forgive them for being rude exactly once. The real difficulty is that since we don’t all have equal resources you can’t always repay people in exactly the way they paid you. You can repay them in other ways, though, and demand repayment from them. Yes, I’m talking about money.
What you need is a catalogue of emotional intimacy and the corresponding price equivalences. Then if you feel worried that you won’t be able to repay someone for their care or grace by extending care and grace to them, you can give them a crisp twenty dollar bill instead and know that things are now even.
The best way to proceed is to decide on terms now, and then re-evaluate at regular intervals.
Here are some suggested starting points:
Listening to a boring story—$5
Thirty seconds of eye contact—$2
Ten minutes of sitting together in comfortable silence—$5
Feigning concern at a personal problem—$10
Expressing genuine concern at a personal problem—$20
Forgiving a moment of unintended but hurtful selfishness—$20
Forgiving a pattern of selfishness someone should really know better than—$50
This is just a hypothetical framework to start with. Do your own internal audit and assess the monetary value of intimacy accordingly. Just remember to pay people promptly, and invoice them regularly. To avoid confusion I definitely recommend an itemized invoice.
The point is, once you work out a system of exchanges pursuing and maintaining the relationship is absolutely ethical.
Good luck!