The Problem With The Burden Of Gratitude

By Elizabeth Wallace


It can be all too easy for well-meaning individuals to be manipulated into relationships that they did not want or simply did not intend. When a person seems to go out of their way to help another, sometimes their intentions are not exactly generous. They may simply be wanting to draw that person into an entanglement by manipulating them with the burden of gratitude.

Dating is a common method that a person can be victimized in this way. In traditional relationships, the man is the one who buys dinner. All too often a man uses this fact as a way to manipulate the girl into sex acts, or even an ongoing relationship that she might not wish to have had because he makes her feel she somehow owes him something as repayment for money spent on dinners and movies.

Many women have taken to the habit of going Dutch, and paying for their own meals when they first begin getting to know someone. This is excellent advice, even if it leaves some young girls unable to afford dating. Better to avoid indebtedness than to allow themselves to be manipulated into undesired acts as payment for a free meal.

Religious institutions are notorious for using indebtedness for help as a way to get new members. It is perfectly legal for them to require attendance at services as payment for help given to homeless people. In a perfect world, one would be able to get food, clothing, and shelter without being required to embrace a particular religious doctrine, but that is not how most churches approach it.

Parents who use free housing or child care as leverage over their adult children are guilty of the same thing. It is not legal for them to require grown children to adhere to curfews, but they will do exactly that in order to keep control of where there children go or who they see in their spare time. These restrictions are manipulative, and no parent should try to force rules on adults in order to control them.

It is a shameful fact, but anyone offering help must be evaluated to determine if there is an ulterior motive. So often the person who is most solicitous of our needs is simply a person who seeks to gain an advantage over us in some way. Sometimes their intention is to learn as much as they can about an individual for the sole purpose of spreading gossip.

As well-meaning people, we must evaluate our own intentions when we offer to assist others in some way. Sometimes our own reasons for helping someone has motives that we have not evaluated fully, and we might be acting in a manner that is not entirely giving. It is up to each of us to ensure that, when we offer help to a friend, we are not offering such help for the sole purpose of benefiting ourselves.

We all need help at times in our lives, but who we seek to receive that help from must be carefully considered. Sometimes it is best to seek the help of a stranger before we allow friends, coworkers, or exes to become a part of our solution. Not everyone who seems to love us is offering their assistance with a generous heart.




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