MyTwoCents: “Will it get to a point where she feels like I’m taking advantage of her? I don’t want to come off as a freeloader, but I don’t want our financial differences to get in the way of our friendship, either”
Photo: Vintage Images/Getty Images I’m in my early 20s, live in Brooklyn, and make about $45,000 a year in publishing. After rent, student loan payments, and pretty basic living expenses, I don’t have much left over. But my best friend does, and she usually pays for me when we do things together. I’d be lying if I said it made me all that uncomfortable — it just doesn’t seem like a big deal to her. Whenever I’ve said I feel bad about it, she waves it off. But I’m worried about this long-term.
The thank-you part is key, though. To me, there’s a clear line between freeloading and polite acceptance, and it all depends on how you acknowledge the nice thing that’s being done for you. To figure out how you might do so, I consulted Lizzie Post, the co-president of the Emily Post Institute and an expert on modern etiquette and social taboos. “When you’re on the receiving end of someone’s generosity, enjoy it!” she says. “That’s part of the point.
Unless, of course, you really do feel uncomfortable. I’ve seen plenty of situations where generosity gets weird, and morphs into something more transactional. Maybe you start to expect your friend to cover every dinner bill, or worry that you vaguely owe something in return — red flags. If you feel like you can’t turn down her invitations to hang out because you feel indebted to her, that’s also a problem.
But friendship capital isn’t tit-for-tat; it’s complicated, delicate, and ultimately unknowable. Degges-White describes it like a pot that you’re each contributing to: “At the beginning of a friendship, you’re each putting little things in the pot, and then upping the ante and seeing how the other person responds,” she says. “When you stop keeping tabs on how much or when someone put something in that pot, the friendship is solidified.
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