Ian On The Red Dot

I once loaned a friend $2000 to buy a computer. It was in university and she called me asking if I could help her with the amount because she wanted to collect her laptop. Being a close friend, I acquiesced to the request. A short while later, we had a major argument and she offered to return the money.

I refused.

I refused because I feared the return of the money was a way for her to delineate where our friendship would never be the same again if not totally ended.

When I passed her the money, it was not as a gift. I expected that one day when I really needed $2000, she would be able to help me by providing that sum. Yet it wasn’t really a loan because I had hoped the money would be with her as indefinitely as possible - it was my childish way of hoping that no matter what happened with our friendship, I would still have a tenuous place in her life.

There was another friend who I covered for whenever we went out. We weren’t exactly dating and she paid lip-service to the concept of going Dutch by always saying, “I’ll pay you back later”. Of course, later never happened.

I had a bitter fallout with this second friend and in the aftermath of the fallout, I asked for a certain amount of money she had promised to return.

It was a most ungentlemanly thing to do. Here is the thing - each time I paid ‘first’, I knew then at that moment the money was gone. And I did it willingly because I considered her a friend, I understood her financial situation and I enjoyed her company. In my bitterness, I behaved poorly.

I always look back at that moment and reflect on why I reacted that way. And I realized this - there is a subconscious tabulation that goes on in a lot of us. The better ones among us have risen beyond such petty considerations but for me, and I think it would not be presumptuous to say for most of us as well, we are constantly struggling with the tallying that indicates if we are losing out in any relationship.

When a particular relationship ends or if we think it is going to end, we want to ensure we don’t leave it any poorer than we started.

No one wants to be made to look like a chum. It doesn’t matter if someone did it intentionally or accidentally, we always tend to assume the worse that we have been played like a fiddle.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this - like what my parents always advised, never lend what you cannot give. I know some people will say that the value of the amount is important. I disagree. When does the value become too big? When it hits the thousands? When it hits the hundreds? Each of us have different comfort levels to how much we are willing to lend which to me is the same as how much we are willing to give.

So whatever the amount, the same principle applies - never lend what you cannot give.

That however is just one side of the equation. As friends, we must learn never to accept what we cannot return, even if it is a gift. Accept gifts graciously, and always be mindful that as a friend, we should reciprocate. No one should ever dictate how we reciprocate but as friends we need to be aware that not all gifts are equal and not everyone has the same expectations of a friendship.

If we cannot meet those expectations, we should graciously decline no matter how much the giver insists.

The thing is I think sympathy for the lady in the recent kerfuffle changed when the issue of money was brought up because what was happening suddenly fitted into the worldview a lot of us, especially the males and me included, have about women.

We have become so cynical that we immediately assume the worse of the lady and also the guy.

That worldview is that all women are cock-teasing, attention-seeking, emotional-manipulators that try to squeeze money, energy and time out of us guys and string us along when they know they can milk us.

The other worldview reflected was that while all guys may be horny bastards who think only with their dicks, there is the certain (?naive) hope that it was possible for a guy to help a girl just because he wanted to (and felt it was the right chivalrous thing to do) and not because he expected any reciprocation in love or lust and that a girl could be free to treat a guy how she wants, no matter how it might seem like signals, without her having to restrain herself and tell herself that she got to treat guys differently - Ladies want the freedom while leaving the onus of handling her actions totally to the guys.

Neither of these worldviews can be said to be wrong. Each of us are defined very much by our own experiences and that has shaped our worldview.

The truth is that there are individuals who exist on the extremes of both worldviews. There are guys who are horny bastards who will take advantage of girls whenever they can. There are girls who are cock-teasing, gold-digging sluts who know how to use their sexuality to manipulate guys. There are girls who are totally clueless about what might be appropriate and gender-specific behavior. There are guys who are totally inept with women that if Jessica Alba stripped in front of them, they will wonder if there is a hidden camera meant to play a joke or who will blush and quickly grab a towel to cover her up to protect her dignity.

Most of us just fall somewhere in between.

Sadly, when we were born, our birth certificates didn’t come with a play-by-play walk-through on how to circumnavigate the quagmire that is human relationships.

We are all trying to make sense of the rules. Unfortunately, we all play by different rules. It is hard to figure out who is playing with which rule and a lot of times, our judgment is clouded by our hope of what rules other people are playing by.

It is also a human weakness to look for the people who have given us the most attention in our times of need when everyone else seems to forsake us even when we cannot reciprocate their level of attention and kindness. People get led on not because two people go out as friends but because one asks another to do more than what should be asked for when there is an imbalance in feelings.

Are we taking advantage of these givers or are these givers using us to validate their own place in the world?

There are no winners or losers, only victims in this tragic comedy we call life.

In the end, when the dust settles and the mob rides away to the next town and another spectacle, what really remains is just two people who have been hurt and are still grappling with their place in the world.