Not Wanting to Be a Bother

Someone asks how you're doing and you say “fine, busy.”

You've spent days with something that won't let you sleep, something that would get sorted sooner if you told just one person. But you don't tell anyone. You deal with it yourself, as always, a little worse and a lot later. And on top of that you're left feeling like you did the right thing.

You didn't want to be a bother.

Few things are taught with so much affection. Don't be a bother. Don't be a burden. Sort it out yourself. As kids we learn that the good child is the one who doesn't cause trouble, and as adults we keep admiring people who never need anything, the ones who carry everything on their own.

I'm not outside of this. A good part of what I know how to do I learned on my own, and I tend to prefer working things out by myself. So I'm not writing this to correct anyone. I'm writing it because I started to grow suspicious of something I had always taken as good.

When we think about asking for something, we picture the other person saying no, or saying yes with a look of effort. And it almost never happens. We badly underestimate how many people would say yes, and we forget that, a lot of the time, saying no would cost the other person more.

And the other way round, something curious happens. When someone asks us for something, it rarely weighs on us. Often we're even glad they thought of us.

We only think helping is a burden when we're the ones who have to ask.

The other fear doesn't come true either, the fear of looking incapable. When someone asks your advice on something hard, you don't think they don't know. You think they have good judgment, and that they trusted you enough to ask.

If it were only a miscalculation, knowing about it would fix it. But you can know all of this and still not ask for anything.

I suspect “I didn't want to be a bother” almost never means exactly that. A lot of the time it means “I didn't want to owe anyone anything.”

And owing nothing to anyone sounds like freedom, but relationships are made of exactly that. You drove me to the airport. I listened when you needed it. You helped me move. I paid you back another day, without saying so. Nobody keeps track, and that's precisely why it binds us. A relationship where nobody owes anybody anything looks a lot like having no relationship at all.

And today it's easier than ever to owe nothing, because almost everything can be paid for. You no longer ask for help moving, you hire a van. You no longer ask a friend for a ride, you order a car on your phone. You no longer ask anyone what to do, you look it up. Each of those things makes sense on its own. Together, they've quietly removed almost every chance we had to need each other.

Paying is the cleanest way to owe nobody anything. What you pay for ends right there. What you owe stays, and that's why two people still have something to do with each other.

Giving is comfortable, because it puts you on the side of the one who has something to offer. Letting yourself be helped means accepting a while in someone else's hands, waiting, and letting them do it their way instead of yours. I think that for someone used to solving everything, that feels far too much like losing control.

Someone offers to give you a hand and you say “no need” before they've finished the sentence. You didn't think about it. You didn't even work out whether it would help. It just came out, the way “sorry” comes out when someone steps on your foot.

“No need” is almost always a reflex, and almost never an answer.

And the strange thing is that very often there was a need. What there was no need for was anyone noticing.

Meanwhile, the other person is left without their part. We tend to think more of the people we've helped. Whoever helped you move holds you a little closer than before, even though you're the one who owes them.

Every time you ask someone for nothing, you're not saving them any effort. You might be taking away one of their ways of caring for you.

And you almost never find out, because nobody is going to tell you “I wish you'd asked me,” even if they've thought it many times.

It happens with people who handle everything on their own, and now and then I've seen it in myself. We admire them, and hardly anyone knows how to get close to them. From the outside it looks like they lack nothing, and that's exactly why nobody dares to offer them anything. If you never let anyone do anything for you, people end up loving you from a distance, which is the only way you've left them.

And there's something that gets passed on without meaning to. The one who never asks for anything teaches the people around them that needing is a little shameful. That the normal thing is to manage. So nobody asks them for anything either. And in the end they're exactly the person nobody dares to bother, the one who could help everyone and whom nobody tells anything.

The good child who never caused trouble becomes the adult who, without realising it, teaches the same thing.

I'm not saying you should ask for everything. Being able to manage without falling apart is worth a lot, and I don't want to take that away from anyone.

But we mix up two things. Depending is not being able to do it without the other person. Asking, most of the time, is being able to do it alone, a little worse and a lot later, and choosing not to do it that way. The first ties you down. The second just opens a door. And out of fear of the first, we give up the second too.

I suspect that at some point we turned not needing anyone into a way of proving we're worth something.

Asking for help without feeling you're losing something is a lot harder than never asking at all.

Someone asks how you're doing.

And it takes you a second longer to say “fine.”