2025 taught me a lot about how people give and receive love. I learned the real differences between avoidant personalities and anxious lean-ins. I was schooled in mismatched effort, watched past untreated trauma hijack the present, and got uncomfortably close to a few runners along the way.
Something I’ve noticed in my 40s is how often I try to fix things that aren’t actually my responsibility. The tricky part about being the revealer, the make-it-happen-er, or the compulsive helper is that it feels like a deep bond to the one doing the giving…and like a ten-day antibiotic to the one getting “fixed.”
People will absolutely let you be their medicine.
They’ll let you drive to them, give your time, donate your talent, buy for them, fix things for them, pour into them, talk them up, build it, write it, design it, clean it…whatever you’re good at. And as long as you don’t show them your needs, you’ll have what looks like a wonderful relationship blooming…right up until your resources are used up.
That tight, sour feeling in your face, the one that makes you scowl when you think about how poorly they treat you the moment you stop performing – that hits like rejection. It’s the rejection our inner people-pleaser child managed to delay and hoped to avoid with all the good deeds and “I helped” gestures.
So what if we normalized internally auditing why we do things for people?
It isn’t always altruistic. Sometimes we’re auditioning, hoping our super-awesome effort earns us a main-character role in someone else’s life. And sometimes we truly give simply because we can, with no expectation of return – the healthiest version we can only really do by being the healthiest version of us.
But all the time, we need a safe place to be imperfectly human. A place to mess up, have needs, cry, and let someone else extend their resources to us….fill our cup, too.
Health-check yourself before choosing whose medicine you take, so you know how much of yours you can give, and where it will actually do the most good. Health-check your relationship with God first…there’s a great chance you have a God sized hole you’re trying to fill with acts of service.
The goal isn’t to stop giving or to love less, it’s to give from a place where you’re also allowed to be held, loved, fulfilled, and at peace with the outcome.
Deeper Than a Puddle 