Essay: What Do We Owe Each Other?
Photo by Dani Shishoian.
I am 23 years old, which means that, naturally, I am considering whether or not I am a bad friend.
As the perpetual Youngest Friend, I have watched those close to me, former twenty-three-year-olds themselves, go through this — I have watched them deal with tugging at and away from relationships that they are desperate to hold on to or let go of, getting to the other side having taken away either side of the same coin: either we don’t owe anyone anything, or we owe each other everything.
I’ll be honest, neither of these conclusions have ever been particularly attractive to me. On one hand, the idea of not owing your friends anything almost makes life seem like it’s not worth living. I mean, what are we all doing here, why are we all sentient beings existing on this same crowded little planet if not to lean on each other, to hold each other and hold each other accountable, to crack ourselves open in front of each other in hopes that we can find fulfillment and love through being together? What is the point of any of this if not for other humans?
On the other hand, though, giving everything to a person? Tying ourselves to one another and putting these unrealistic expectations on each other, only to take so much of each other that no one is left with anything? Holding onto relationships that are unfulfilling for the sake of holding on to them, for the idea that we are indebted to each other to do this, doesn’t sound appealing — or healthy — either.
I know it sounds like I'm being too much of an extremist, and I probably am, but ask anyone in your life if they feel like we owe each other nothing or everything, and though no one will have a good answer for you, most people you ask will pick a side after some thought. Whether any of us like it or not, we all have different expectations of the people around us, and those expectations (or lack thereof) can either foster beautiful, lasting relationships or they can destroy them.
The Owing Nothing side of the argument has an enticing contention: if there are no expectations, if you live in isolation, you can’t expect anything of anyone, and no one can expect anything of you, which means you are free of conflict, free of the pain of others strangling you or vice versa, free of disappointment.
Instagram infographics are the biggest proponents of this, encouraging you to cut off anyone in your life who is difficult and that if someone isn’t the shiny product of years of therapy, they aren’t worth the grief. These infographics will be the first to tell you that you don’t owe anyone anything, and they’ll do it in a trendy, moon-juice-goop adjacent font and gradient background, so you know it has to be true. The internet is filled with TikTok therapists giving you tutorials on how to end friendships using the most therapized terms so that you sound like you’re in the right, people on Twitter saying that it's toxic to ask your friends to help you move, and self-help blogs that essentially put a pseudo-spiritual twist on the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” narrative. After all, the most general advice tends to operate on extreme sides of a spectrum because you can’t apply nuance if you aren’t talking about a specific situation.
Moreover, the Owing Nothing argument is the objectively true one. You don’t actually owe any of the people in your life anything. You won’t get crushed by an anvil from the sky if you don’t show up to a birthday party you RSVP’d yes for, or didn’t text your friend back, or ghosted that one Bumble match. There is nothing that is actively forcing you to do anything for anyone else unless you subscribe to a religion that tells you to do so, but none of us have actually found out whether or not there is an afterlife, so for the time being, no anvil.
None of us really want to live that way, though. All human beings want is connection, it’s what has sustained our existence for all these years. Everything we do boils down to the desire to relate — to want to see and be seen by each other. So, all of us being alone, shutting each other out, and living in our little bubbles till we're “fixed” isn’t really an option.
Which brings me to the other side of the spectrum, the argument of Owing Everything. The idea of having someone who will stick with us through thick and thin, who will continue to be there even when we aren’t our best, is equally enticing. It’s part of why we love getting married — there’s a feeling of safety in being promised a lasting relationship, binding someone to ourselves so that we don’t have to be alone. When we snap at someone, there’s comfort in knowing that they will still be there because of all that the two of you have been through together.
Owing Everything also gives us purpose. As human beings, we’re aimless without it, so we put it in each other. We show up to dinners on time, we go to each other’s gigs, and we help each other up when we’re down because it makes us feel important. In extreme cases, this is, of course, a savior complex, but I think it lives in all of us, even if we don’t take it that far. Everyone has felt like the Best Person In The World because they picked up their friend from the airport during rush hour. Everyone has gotten a birthday gift for someone when they haven’t really wanted to because that person got one for them.
At the same time, though, the inability to walk away from a person who is hurting you can’t be the solution either. I know all of us like to imagine (or at least have entertained) the philosophy that our friends are permanent fixtures, that we have an inextricable tie to one another, and that we all need to die for each other or some shit like that, but it’s just not fair to expect that from one other. We should be able to walk away from relationships that are hurting us — I don’t believe that we can help each other if we’re hurting each other, anyway. In my opinion, it takes courage to look around at a situation that is unhealthy and force yourself to get up and walk away from it. As a prophet (Taylor Swift) once said, Sometimes giving up is the strong thing / Sometimes to run is the brave thing / Sometimes walking out is the one thing / That will find you the right thing.”
Truthfully, the reason why I bristle at the thought of Owing Everything is because I have been burned by it before; I have given everything I have to people and expected everything back, and it resulted in simultaneous ping-pong matches of expectations in which someone constantly was dropping the ball. Feeling like we owe each other a lot can create the perfect breeding ground for codependency to thrive. After all, the reason why the pendulum swung so far into the Instagram infographic territory is because I think most of us know the feeling of being taken advantage of by somebody or had unrealistic expectations put on us that we felt like we were being punished for if we didn’t meet, some of us have even experienced this to the point of abuse. We all have that “toxic” ex-friend or ex-partner who we are happier without. We all have had a relationship that has felt transactional, like you were both keeping a tally of Good Deeds you did for each other and only being fueled to do something for them because you feel like you were indebted.
There is truth to the Owing Nothing argument, but I just for the life of me cannot get behind the idea that living without needing each other is the best way to live either.
So, where does that leave us?
Well, like I said, I'm 23, so I don't know shit, but I think the beauty of being a human being is, yeah, we don’t owe each other anything, but we give so much to each other anyway. We help each other with our messes not because we have to, not because we owe it to each other, but because we want to, because we love each other, because being human means helping other humans without keeping score. We celebrate each other’s birthdays, we cook for each other, we hold funerals for each other, giving things to each other even after one of us is gone.
You don’t sit with your friend all night while they cry over a breakup because you feel like you owe them something, you do it because you love them and want to help them. I don’t think any friend would feel particularly loved if they felt like you were doing it as an obligation, anyway. If someone tells you that you hurt them, you promise to try to do better, not for fear of getting in “trouble” again, but because you want them to feel comfortable with you. True relationships are created when we say “I want to,” not “I have to.” It's how we stay honest with each other. It’s how you know that when someone walks away, other people are staying because they want to be there.
If all we have in this world is free will and each other, then making the choice to love a person, and giving each other the choice to let one another go, are the best gifts we can give each other.
