It started with blintzes.
Really good blintzes — the kind of dairy-soaked delight only someone deep in the heart of Brooklyn’s Jewish community would know how to find. He told me it was all for me. A gesture of welcome, friendship, maybe even initiation. I was touched. I’ve always considered myself a generous person. I give. I host. I like connecting with people through food, conversation, and culture.
But over time, I noticed something: the giving didn’t stop with that meal. It grew — in expectation, in cost, in pressure.
This person, someone I’d met through mutual friends, had a way of talking that made everything sound reciprocal… eventually. “One day,” he’d say, “I’ll take care of you. Just like I took care of you with that first meal.” There was always a string attached, but it was invisible at first. A kind of spiritual I.O.U. that only later revealed itself as a growing list of favors I was expected to fulfill.
Kosher food deliveries across boroughs. Uber rides. Requests for help with rent. And excuses — so many excuses — for why employment wasn’t possible, despite having access to vocational resources, disability supports, and time. Every suggestion I made was met with a wall. Not now. Doesn’t apply to me. That won’t work.
And then the guilt trips started.
“You’ve helped before, why not again?”
“You don’t understand what it’s like to live with this.”
“You have more than I do — can’t you share?”
As a therapist, I know this pattern. It’s a blend of learned helplessness and quiet manipulation, often rooted in pain. But knowledge doesn’t make the experience any less draining when you’re on the receiving end. Especially when you’re being slowly recruited into someone else’s story of victimhood, without your consent.
There’s a fine line between compassion and codependency. Between generosity and exploitation. And that line is easy to miss when you’re used to saying yes.
So I did something different this time.
I said no.
Not because I stopped caring. But because I started caring for myself. I gave him links to job resources. I offered to help brainstorm realistic steps. But I stopped offering my wallet, my time, my constant availability. And when he pushed, I held firm. I said: I can’t keep carrying this for you. I won’t.
It wasn’t easy. But it was necessary.
If you’re someone who gives — beware of the quiet shift from gift to obligation. Notice when people stop thanking you and start expecting you. Notice when help becomes a job you never applied for. And when it does, remember: you can still be kind without being used.
Saying no doesn’t mean you’ve failed someone.
It means you’ve finally shown up for yourself.
We talk a lot in the therapy world about boundaries — but too often we talk about them in the abstract. In real life, boundaries aren’t just lines we draw. They’re fences we build in moments of exhaustion, of emotional depletion, when we realize we’ve let someone go too far in without asking what they were bringing with them.
In this case, what he brought was an entire framework of passive dependence disguised as need. That’s not to say he wasn’t struggling — maybe physically, financially, emotionally. But the way he related to his struggle became the problem. It was the story he told himself that he could never quit working, that people owed him help, that every closed door was someone else’s fault. It was helplessness with just enough calculation to keep others looped in.
And I see this in my work, too. People who don’t want therapy so much as they want a life raft they can sit in while others paddle. That’s not healing — that’s deferral of responsibility.
But here’s the twist: I used to be this guy.
Years ago, when I was more unwell, more disconnected from my own power and more consumed by my illness, I too leaned heavily on others. I justified my requests. I believed that life owed me softness because mine had been hard. And I was lucky — I had people who helped, who held me up. But the turning point came when someone finally said: I can’t do this for you anymore.
That moment hurt. But it woke me up.
And now, maybe, I’m paying it forward — not with more help, but with honesty.
Saying no doesn’t mean the end of kindness. It means recognizing where the kindness is no longer mutual, where it’s become an unconscious contract that only one person keeps signing.
It also means this: you are not required to set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
Even if they call it friendship.
Even if they once fed you blintzes.
Even if they remind you of a version of yourself you once were.
You are allowed to evolve — and expect others to do the same.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a similar bind — stuck between guilt and burnout, empathy and resentment — know this: you’re not alone. The world is full of beautiful souls who want to give, who want to help, who believe in second chances. But help that depletes you is not help. It’s harmful in slow motion.
Let your no be a yes to something better: your peace, your clarity, your power.
Max E. Guttman is the owner of Mindful Living LCSW, PLLC, a private mental health practice in Yonkers, New York.
1 thought on “It started with blintzes.”
Well spoken about the whole enabling thing