WHEN GIVING TOO MUCH TURNS INTO RESENTMENT

Guys, would y’all believe it? It is 1:57 in the morning, and I am finally in my room, in my bed, trying to unwind and go to sleep at a decent hour—which clearly is not happening tonight.

But I’m excited about tomorrow.

I have to finish all the errands I didn’t get done today because my alteration guy wasn’t there, but more importantly, I get to pick up my little girl and see little Sloane.

I haven’t seen Elliot since August 2, at her birthday party, and that is a long time for me. I haven’t talked to her or FaceTimed with her either, and I miss her terribly. I really wish my kids would do better about that. If enough time goes by that I’m not seeing her, let her call me. Let me FaceTime her for five minutes. I’m her Lovie. I miss her.

But tomorrow I get her, and she gets to spend the night with us, so Lovie is VERY excited.

I think we may take her to Recess or Chuck E. Cheese, and tomorrow night maybe Star Rover or somewhere fun for dinner. Then we’ll have Sunday together before we take her home.

So I should probably be sleeping.

Instead, I’m lying here thinking.

And tonight I want to talk about something a little more serious.

I have the sweetest friend.

I mean that sincerely. I love this woman, and I don’t know what I ever did to deserve the kind of friend she has been to me.

We actually went to junior high and high school together, although we weren’t really friends back then. I knew her, and we had mutual friends, but I switched schools my sophomore year so I could be closer to my boyfriend—which, by the way, was incredibly stupid.

Girls, don’t do that. 😂

Fast-forward to Facebook. I’ve probably been Facebook friends with her since around 2009, which means this woman has had a front-row seat to some of the best and probably some of the absolute worst versions of me.

We don’t talk on the phone every day. We don’t have that kind of friendship.

But if I need her—and I mean REALLY need her—I can text or message her, and she is there.

No questions asked.

She watches my social media. She gives me advice. She sends me ideas. She tells me things I probably need to hear. She helps me more than she probably even realizes.

And for whatever reason, I also feel incredibly comfortable telling her my dirty laundry.

Lately, we have talked quite a bit about why I do some of the things I do.

Today she sent me this:

“When a woman grows up feeling unseen, she learns to love by overgiving. She pours into everyone else, hoping they’ll pour back into her. She becomes the caretaker, the fixer, the one who shows up even when no one shows up for her. And the hardest part? She’s not trying to be strong—she’s simply waiting for someone to do for her what she’s always done for everyone else.”

Y’all.

That brought tears to my eyes.

Because I saw myself in it.

And I’m beginning to realize something about myself that I’m not sure I completely understood before.

I overgive.

I don’t mean I’m generous sometimes.

I mean I go overboard.

I will spend money I probably shouldn’t spend. I will rearrange my entire day. I will drop whatever I’m doing. I will solve the problem. Find the person. Make the phone call. Buy the thing. Plan the holiday. Fix the mess. Find the referral. Make something happen.

If somebody I love needs something, my immediate response is almost always:

What can I do?

And for a long time, I thought that was simply who I was.

Maybe part of it is.

But I’m starting to wonder if there is another part of it that I haven’t wanted to look at.

What am I expecting in return?

Not money.

Not gifts.

Not for somebody to “owe” me.

I think what I’ve been expecting in return is love. Appreciation. Consideration. Respect.

Maybe somewhere in my brain, I have believed that if I love people hard enough, do enough for them, give enough to them, show up enough, and make their lives easier enough, surely they will understand how much I love them—and surely they will love me that way back.

But that isn’t how life works.

And THAT is where I get myself into trouble.

Because when I have gone completely overboard for somebody and then I feel ignored, dismissed, disrespected, forgotten or unappreciated, something in me snaps.

My brain immediately goes:

Are you freaking kidding me? After EVERYTHING I have done for you, THIS is how you’re going to treat me?

And then I react.

Sometimes I overreact.

Sometimes I go completely ballistic.

And then suddenly the conversation isn’t about what hurt me anymore.

It’s about my reaction.

And I lose all credibility.

That is the part I have to own.

I’m never going to sit here and pretend I was a perfect mother.

I wasn’t.

Far from it.

I drank too much. I did stupid shit. I made mistakes I’m not proud of. There are things I wish I could go back and change, but I can’t.

My children didn’t deserve some of the things they got from me, just like I didn’t deserve some of the things I got from the adults who raised me.

I didn’t have great role models in a lot of ways.

But at some point, you have to stop blaming what happened to you and start taking responsibility for what you do with it.

I didn’t completely break the cycle.

That’s on me.

I can say that over the last five years, I have done a LOT better. I am much more aware of myself. I recognize things now that I didn’t recognize before.

Do I still fail?

Absolutely.

Sometimes miserably.

My husband has a saying about me:

“Don’t poke the bear.”

I’m the bear. 😂

And while we laugh about it, I’m realizing that “don’t poke the bear” really isn’t good enough.

Because people are going to poke the bear.

Family will.

Friends will.

Life will.

People are going to disappoint me. They’re going to hurt my feelings. They’re going to behave in ways I don’t understand. They’re going to fail to appreciate things I think they should appreciate.

I cannot control that.

But I have to learn to control what happens next.

I don’t want another person to have that much control over me.

And maybe an even bigger lesson for me is learning that boundaries aren’t always something we set for other people. Sometimes we need boundaries with ourselves.

Maybe my boundary isn’t:

“You can’t ask me for anything anymore.”

Maybe my boundary needs to be:

“Tammy, stop. Why are you doing this?”

Do I genuinely want to do it?

Will doing it make me happy even if nobody thanks me?

Would I still want to do it if absolutely nothing came back to me?

Or am I doing it because somewhere deep down I am hoping it will make that person love me more, appreciate me more, include me more, respect me more or choose me?

Because if that’s why I’m doing it, I probably shouldn’t do it.

That is a hard realization.

And here’s another one:

Giving with an unspoken expectation attached to it isn’t really giving freely.

That doesn’t make me a bad person.

It means I need to understand myself better.

Because nobody else knows about the invisible agreement I made in my own head.

They didn’t necessarily agree that because I dropped everything for them, they would drop everything for me.

They didn’t agree that because I went crazy at Christmas, they would treat me a certain way in March.

They didn’t agree that because I solved their problem, they would show up the way I needed them to when I had one.

I made that agreement by myself.

And then I got angry when they didn’t honor it.

That one hurts to admit.

I also think I’ve spent a lot of my life assuming that certain things are “common sense.”

If somebody goes above and beyond for you, you appreciate them.

If somebody always shows up for you, you show up for them.

If somebody loves you loudly, you don’t treat them carelessly.

But I’m learning that my common sense isn’t necessarily somebody else’s common sense.

People love differently.

People give differently.

And yes, some people are simply takers.

But here’s the thing I’m finally understanding:

It is my responsibility to stop giving more than I can give without becoming resentful.

That sentence may be the entire lesson.

Because I don’t want to stop being generous.

I don’t want to stop loving people.

I don’t want to become cold or bitter or start keeping score.

I LIKE being a giver.

I like making people happy. I like doing ridiculous things for the people I love. I like making holidays special. I like helping. I like fixing things.

I don’t want to lose that part of myself.

I just need to stop using that part of myself to fill something inside of me that another person may never be able to fill.

I have to learn that I cannot earn love by doing more.

I cannot buy appreciation.

I cannot force someone to value me by making myself invaluable to them.

And I cannot keep emptying myself into other people and then become furious because nobody noticed I was empty.

That isn’t fair to me.

And honestly, it isn’t fair to them either.

Because then the cycle starts.

I give too much.

I expect something I haven’t said out loud.

I don’t get it.

I feel hurt.

I get angry.

I react.

They’re angry about my reaction.

I feel even more unappreciated.

And then I resent them.

And I don’t want to live like that.

I don’t want resentment in my heart toward the people I love.

So maybe the answer isn’t changing everybody else.

Maybe part of the answer is changing what I do before I ever get to the resentment.

Before I say yes.

Before I spend the money.

Before I rearrange my life.

Before I swoop in and fix everything.

I need to ask myself one question:

If I get absolutely nothing back from this—not even a thank you—do I still want to do it?

If the answer is yes, then do it with my whole heart.

And if the answer is no?

Maybe that’s when I need to love myself enough to say no.

Not necessarily no to them.

No to me.

No, Tammy. You don’t have to prove anything.

No, you don’t have to fix everything.

No, you don’t have to earn your place in someone’s life.

No, doing more isn’t necessarily going to make somebody love you more.

And no, you cannot keep giving until you’re empty and then punish people for not realizing you needed to be filled back up.

Y’all, this is hard as hell for me.

I don’t have it figured out.

I’m writing about it because I’m trying to figure it out.

And maybe somebody reading this tonight is the caretaker. The fixer. The giver. The one who always shows up.

Maybe you’re exhausted.

Maybe you’re angry.

Maybe you’re carrying resentment toward people you love because you have spent years wondering:

After everything I’ve done for you, why can’t you do this one thing for me?

Maybe the question isn’t only why they don’t.

Maybe we also have to ask ourselves why we keep giving beyond our own limits and hoping somebody else will eventually recognize the sacrifice.

That’s what I’m trying to learn.

Life is hard, y’all.

Marriage is hard.

Friendships are hard.

And kids? You think kids are hard when they’re little?

Lord have mercy.

But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life blaming other people for my reactions.

I want to be able to be hurt without becoming destructive.

I want to be disappointed without exploding.

I want to love people without keeping an invisible ledger.

I want to give because I genuinely want to give—not because some wounded part of me is hoping that if I just do enough, somebody will finally make me feel seen.

And maybe most importantly, I want to learn that being loved isn’t something I should have to earn by exhausting myself.

I’m working on it.

Clearly, I still have a ways to go.

But tonight, thanks to a very wise friend who sent me one little post at exactly the right time, I think I understand myself a little better than I did yesterday.

And for tonight, maybe that’s enough.

Goodnight, y’all. ❤️