Doing 'favors'

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I'm done with them.

I can garuntee you that in the last 4 years i've never said no to a favor. Never once, anytime one of you has needed a ride to the airport, a ride to pick your car up from the mechanic, a ride to/from work, my help and SUV to pick up a peice of furniture, anything, I've never once said no. I made it a mission of mine to not say no.


How many times have i asked for a favor in return? Today was the 3rd time in at least the last 4 years. Dozens of favors done, probably over a hundred, and none of the 3 times i actually needed a hand you could come through. Ok, ok ok, granted this time was last minute, but when i find out you just didnt want to spare 2 hours, and then mock me for it, it's done.


So eff off everyone, dont bother me ever again.






(p.s. hopefully it's obvious, but this is not directed at anyone here on WP, the 'you's refer to a ~half a dozen people, friends and family)

I hate that feeling as well.

I know the feeling, willa, I'm such a rescuer/protector and I always bend over backwards for people, then get so little in return. However if I stopped helping people, I'd probably become a hermit from lack of interaction with people at all!

Deciding to stop providing help or favours to others is as foolish as agreeing to all requests. The trick is to generate respect and favours in return for favours given. Tit for tat. That way you benefit yourself as much as you do to others.

You're preaching to the choir. We know it's supposed to be tit for tat, that's why willa is frustrated and felt the need to post here. It's fundamentally a communication problem. For example, I always operate under the presumption that things in life aren't free, favors included. So if I do a large favor for someone, I expect that person to pay up at some point. However, other people see my favor and think, "wow, he's such a 'naturally' kind person!" and do not automatically think that the recipient is all that beholden to me, so eventually they will take take take. Then when I get frustrated that all my energy is depleted, the people go, "what's wrong? I don't understand why you're upset."

I guess it's like friendships in a way. Just as a lot of Aspies will dive right into a friendship instead of building it over time, a lot of us will just do all sorts of large favors instead of doing a series of small ones first to make sure the other person reciprocates. But the issue then becomes, well, if we always tried tit for tat in smaller increments, who is the one who gradually makes the favor granting larger and larger in scope? Because although we'd like to think of tit for tat to maintain balance in the relationship, the truth is that in the end, the vast majority of favors have to be granted as one-sided, without prior knowledge of how that favor will be reciprocated. Sure, once I recognized a leech I could stop granting them favors in the future and cut it off before too much of my own time and energy was spent on that leech, but if everybody used this approach, people with big problems would find it incredibly difficult to overcome them if they could only rely on strangers or people they do not know well for help. This is not a problem for most people who tend to shove big problems under the rug, so this is why they don't see the downside of the approach you are suggesting... but when the sh!t hits the fan it is a very real downside with significant negative consequences.

I don't get this. Are you upset people ask you to do favors but won't do any favors for you in return?

Yeah that be hard and I wouldn't want to bother helping that person. I feel the same way about apologies. I apologize and that person doesn't apologize to me back so I feel gypped. Sometimes I wish I can just stop apologizing, even if I was the one who started the problem, not the other person if that person won't apologize to me back in return for things he or she did to me. So that's why I no longer apologize if someone owes me one first. That's why I try and hold back my apologizes when someone never gave me one when they owed me one because why should I apologize to them if they never did to me about something? I get sick of being treated like a scapegoat.

I usually give people a waiting period prior to engaging them properly as friends, so I can generate a baseline of how they value gestures and favours, then give them some form of chance, see how they act in return, and from then on adapt as required.

When I perform a favor, I try to do it completely free of reciprocation... I go into it knowing that I won't get paid back for it.

In most instances, this attitude of service has built trust and gained me more returns from those I've helped. Haven't had any mooches in a long time, but I don't have very many friends either, so the ones I'm close to don't abuse my favoring attitude.

some people are just ingrateful bast&rds at times.
fun fact.

humans as a whole are a rather selfish species. that even a slight majority can overcome this and commit one selfless good deed in a show of goodwill toward another is impressive. show me someone who can perform such miracles on a frequent regular basis and i'll show you saint material

Story of my life.

I find myself doing favours for a lot of people. The last person that I ever did favours for had just dropped me as a friend and she'd better not try to get back into my life, either.

I get the same thing when it comes to favours...It seems like I am the one doing them and getting nothing back.

Aspies will pay through the nose just to have some sence of belonging or some social interaction.
I am sometimes proud of us being us. Our contribution to this world is great, and we ask nothing.