Undoing Toxic: When Asking for Less Cost Me More
This is the first Undoing Toxic Blog entry for the New Year. Thank you for your support and remember to subscribe on the blog’s homepage to never miss another update. (Click here to subscribe.)
Somewhere along my life’s journey, I adopted the belief that asking for nothing, or at least very little, would make relationships easier. Cleaner. Less complicated. If I did not need much, I would not be seen as incapable, demanding, or high maintenance. I thought that being this way made me more desirable, more flexible, more lovable.
So I learned to handle things myself. I developed a deep, reflexive independence. A quiet mantra of “I’ll figure it out.” Don’t wait. Don’t ask. Don’t expect. Maybe that mindset was shaped by where I grew up. There’s a certain New York City grit that teaches you not to rely on anyone to do for you what you can do yourself. And in many ways, that independence protected me. It helped me avoid disappointment and believing in others and possibly unkept promises. It kept me moving.
But what I did not realize back then is that avoiding disappointment is not the same as building intimacy.
Over time, I became the person for others that I wished I had for myself. I anticipated needs. I showed up early. I filled gaps before anyone noticed they existed. I gave without being asked, and often without being acknowledged. And somewhere along the way, I had a startling realization: maybe this is apart of my many reasons why I became a therapist. The truth is, when you are used to holding things together quietly, you learn how to hold space for others exceptionally well.
Here’s the hard truth I had to sit with: as a giver, if you do not know your limits, takers will always take. Not always maliciously. Sometimes unconsciously. Sometimes simply because the system allows it. If you present as someone who needs nothing, people will believe you and build a relationship around that assumption. And when you act in anticipatory ways, it can go unappreciated because, quite frankly, no one asked you. That’s a painful reckoning as well.
Two to three years ago in a personal conversation, I remember reflecting on why is it that as much as I try to show up with good intentions, clear communication, etc…things still have not worked out including losing people in my life. I was met with a simple yet profound statement: All relationships have to be tested.
Wow, what medicine. I repeated to myself as we sat there. “All relationships have to be tested.” Not always in dramatic or destructive ways, but tested in balance and understanding even in disagreement. Because if a dynamic rests on imbalance, where one person has needs and the other is expected to be “easy,” self-sufficient, and endlessly accommodating, we don’t actually know the strength or resilience of that connection. We only know its convenience. This wisdom changed my perspective on relationship tests and endings moving forward. Don’t wish the testing experience never happened, be thankful it did to uncover hidden truths.
Wanting less can open us up to relationships of convenience. Casual friendships, relationships, situationships, friend zones where we watch the people we invest in easily choose others. And for givers that realization cuts deep. Giving is rarely transactional for us. It is relational and sacrificial. It is rooted in care and love. We provide for who and what we care for and love with our emotions in intangible ways. For this reason, when care is met with a lack of consideration or worse, taken for granted, it hurts in a way that can be hard to name.
Therapist or not, sometimes there is not a clear-cut way of classifying this phenomenon or explaining simply selfish behavior. Not everyone is a narcissist either. Go back to your roots. Being from Jamaican cultural roots, there is a proverb, wisdom, or story for almost anything we can experience.
“Sorry fi mawga dog, mawga dog tun roun bite you.”
“Every day the bucket a go a well, one day the bucket bottom a go drop out.”
These two proverbs speak to the cost of compassion without boundaries. “Sorry fi mawga dog…” reminds us that acting on concern alone does not create safety or reciprocity; overextending care to those who cannot or will not meet you with consideration can leave you hurt. “Every day the bucket a go a well…” speaks to depletion. Even the strongest, most reliable person will eventually break when they are constantly giving without being replenished. Together, they name a hard truth: generosity without limits does not make relationships healthier, it makes them unsustainable.
One of the hardest lessons I have learned is that givers sometimes need to learn from people who prioritize themselves. Not to become selfish but to become sustainable. We need to recognize and accept that self-sacrifice without boundaries leads to burnout, resentment, and emotional depletion. Undoing this toxic lesson has meant grieving the belief that being low-need equals being loved. It has meant reckoning with the reality that the lengths I extended myself do not always define my place in someone else’s life. And that’s sobering. But it is also a clarifying truth.
I invite you to ask yourself the following questions:
What happens when I name what I need to others?
What happens when I stop making myself small to make relationships easier?
What happens when I allow others the opportunity to show up—or not?
Remember, relationships that can’t survive mutual need aren’t as strong as they seem. True connection requires both giving and receiving. If you’re always the one bending, giving, or accommodating, that’s not loyalty; that’s imbalance. Stop mistaking imbalance for loyalty. Real connection requires both people showing up, and it is okay to walk away from anything that is less than that.
Thank you for reading.
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