The people we think of as friends don’t always act that way.

In one case I recall, a patient of mine was in an intimate relationship with a cross-dressing man. She accepted his desire to use some of her clothes, but felt taken advantage of when he didn’t return them.

When you want those close to you who ask for your time, help, sex, grocery pickup, or loans they rarely repay, you may have a problem.

You fear losing them if you become noncompliant.

They only contact you when they need your services.

Finally, you are unsure of yourself—uncertain whether you are generous and kind rather than selfish.

Some folks treat you like a candy machine requiring no coins to deliver the product into their hands. You are thought of as reliable and uncomplaining.

Reciprocity is a word they do not understand.

Imagine you were to list their shortfalls. They might register disbelief and injury at what you said.

At your job, such Individuals might take credit for your work, blame you for their errors, and talk behind your back while smiling when they interact with you.

Sexual partners can come to expect you to make a living for them. This might involve their routine job losses, your having to supply their living expenses, and paying off failed investments.

Providing their post-high-school tuition, or their attempts to start another new, surefire, can’t-miss business that never works out, also add to the financial woes you’re expected to remedy.

Those on the losing end of similar predicaments ought first to reckon with what has kept them from standing up for themselves.

Therapists are used to encountering individuals who have long endured people who take advantage of them, perhaps since childhood.

When they begin to address these one-sided relationships, the results are complicated. They often don’t realize they will be tested as they try both to change the nature of the affiliation and keep it going on a less distressing level.

Maintaining the connection is not guaranteed.

Mark this down. Anyone making a brave, face-to-face effort to repair such relationships must prepare for the worst. Alleged friends may lean against the new version of yourself, hoping to reclaim your earlier, more docile and accommodating form.

Let’s assume you turn away from being the comrade’s private candy machine and become more like a slot machine.

The candy machine is dependable, reliable, and consistent. Every time your chum inserts his coins and makes his selection, he receives the item he chose. You are the prize he expects, not a chocolate bar.

He assumes you are at his service 24/7, without putting money into your pocket.

The slot machine is a different story.

Your thoughtless pal’s knowledge and life experience tell him that the machine’s failure to pay on one occasion doesn’t mean he won’t be a winner the next time or the time after that.

It might take him a long period of failure before he concludes that the machine is broken beyond repair. Broken from where he stands, but not for the now gifted human who refuses to be someone else’s sucker.

Do you want to be the one who waits on another when he makes a request?

Perhaps you have delivered the desired results on an intermittent (or inconsistent) reinforcement schedule. Reinforcing for someone else, not for you. Don’t do what the other asks intermittently. Doing so only encourages further requests and makes them harder to extinguish.

You used to show up and do your master’s bidding each time he asked. Now you only sometimes fulfill his needs, a choice that still works against you.

By giving him what he wants on occasion, he is likely to do two things:

1. Try to charm you back into the dutiful individual you were.
2. Tell you that you’ve changed for the worse, have become selfish and unlikeable, and tries to make you feel bad about yourself in the interest of your returning to duty.

Getting the picture?

If you become consistent and reliable (like the candy machine) in responding to another’s desires and pleadings, the other party will become aware that repeated requests will do no good: the answer shall be NO every time.

And once they have learned this (you will still have to hold your ground before he gives up), your peer makes fewer requests of you after the first.

But if he perceives you as similar to the slot machine, you’re in trouble! He keeps at you because he recognizes one failure at winning doesn’t mean the game is lost. Perhaps the second try will work, or the fifth, or the fiftieth.

This fellow grasps your nature better than you know yourself. He is aware that he has a good chance of wearing you down and pestering you until you are both long gone.

His assault includes threats to stop the friendship you have, so that you return to your previous butler-like self.

The message is simple. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Do what you say you must do.

Every time you give in, it gets harder because you are reinforcing the kinds of behavior in your friend that you are trying to extinguish.

It will work only if you stay the course.

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The top image is a Slot Machine by Jeff Kubina from the Milky Way galaxy,

The next image shows Two Grotesque Heads Facing One Another in a Circle by Gaetano Piccini (1727). Both pictures are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.