44. Reader questions: Isn’t doing what you want pretty self-centered?

How do you feel when you do what someone asks but you don’t want to – you give, but it feels a lot more like a “have-to”? I’d be surprised if you said you feel happy. More likely you’d probably say you feel resentful. Doing what you don’t want to do usually comes from a sense of fear or obligation. Certainly you don’t feel self-respect and self-love.

In article #42 on this blog I discussed how we often give ourselves away, especially in dating, by doing what we don’t want to do. We think we must do that to get the approval we want. The article drew a personal email from a reader that I’d like to quote, then answer. It’s a question others may have also. Here’s the question the reader asked:

Don't we all do things, at times, do a favor, go somewhere, help someone, not because we just wanted to, but because it is important to them? What is wrong with that? Do we always have to just do what we wish to do? Isn't that rather self-centered and selfish? If we have nothing that is urgent at the moment, isn't it nice, just to please someone else?

It’s a good question and perhaps I wasn’t clear about a distinction I was making, so let’s clear that up first. When we do something for someone out of love, everyone wins. The recipient gets a gift of love and the giver gets a gift of love – the healthy self-love of doing something that makes him feel good. I call that healthy because when we have that sense of self-love, we’re not starving for love and manipulating others to get what we could easily give ourselves just by being true to ourselves.

We sometimes hear that self-love is, well… selfish. We should love others first, they say. We’ve also heard that we can’t love others without first loving ourselves. Rather than believe the conflicting opinions we could answer the question from our own direct experience: Do you feel good when you do something out of a sense of obligation, and you don’t really want to? What’s that feel like in your body? Do you steam a little bit inside? On the other hand what would it be like to let yourself know, maybe for the first time, what you’d honestly just love to do in a given situation?

Let’s say your dating friend, Marion, asks you to visit her adult kids with her. You really don’t feel like going but you say yes because you think Mary will be hurt or angry if you don’t. You go, but you go with resentment. At the very least, Mary now owes you one. That’s not self-love and it’s not love for Mary either. It’s manipulation to keep yourself out of trouble. You lose because you don’t respect yourself, and Mary loses because eventually she gets the brunt of your animosity. If nothing more it’s one more irritation with Mary to add to your hidden list. And it’s not even Mary’s fault. All she did was ask.

The reader wondered if I thought doing only what we want to do is self-centered. This is the kind of self-centeredness I’d call self-love, and yes I see that it works to do what we want to do. Doing something for any other reason is just cutting a deal. Doing what we want is healthy because when we don’t love ourselves we’re unhappy, and no one benefits.

Our natural state is freedom and spontaneity. When we’re not trying to control life we live honestly and intuitively in the reality of who we are. On the other hand, when we feel we have to manipulate others by being dishonest we’re not free, we’re not spontaneous and we’re not happy. Instead, we’re cunning and sneaky and deceitful. I choose the freedom and happiness that comes out of giving from love or not giving at all.

Copyright © 2005 Chuck Custer