I'm not sure if this helps but about twenty years ago when I was in Kaunas (Lithuania) I was passing an expensive hotel with a girl who met me to show me around. I had written to her for a couple of years. I suggested a dinner. The excellent five course dinner was a ridiculous price, about $2 and I said "you will of course order something?" She said no. I persisted but she refused. It made my food taste slightly bad. If I had had that time over again I would say to her what was exactly on her mind (in that situation). "Hey you don't think you have to make love to me afterwards do you?! Just eat something!" I'm convinced she thought something like that and was astonished at how much I spent on the food ($2!!) for that was very expensive. It involved an obligation almost certainly. Kill the feeling of obligation. Just give. Share. (Re. illnesses that can be embarrassment, there are other reasons like that)

A timely and interesting question, Naseem -- thanks. Something to begin: If the problem is gendered, then perhaps it also has to do with inertia, with the difficulty of shifting between modes of being. Women spend so much of their time giving, and culture so identifies this role with the feminine, etc, that it is not clear what it means to step out of it, in the same way that many athletes fall apart off the field.

As a more local example, I once spent some time student teaching. The demands of teaching aside, one gets into a mode of speaking which is afterwards hard to shake off.  At dinner parties after a day of teaching I would find myself mediating, educating, mildly lecturing, taking a different place of authority. It was surprising to me how much momentum is built by slightly emphasizing certain muscles in the personality.

How then to live in a state of perfect balance? I hope I will someday be wise enough to know! I do wonder if there is a further physical analogy and if the right kind of exercise would provide insight.  For me personally this begins to brush against issues of freedom which I (for lack of better language) was thinking about in terms of wilderness.

Happy new year!

This is such an important thing, that I've renamed the roles: Giver&Givee. As you observed, you can't have one without the other!

I've been exploring this phenomena for some time now. Written about the different aspects of the problem quite a bit on my blog. It's going to get to be a big factor as the baby boomers get to the point where they need to accept care gracefully during aging. For that reason, this issue is a really important one to discuss. In fact, thanks for articulating the importance of this for me. Having written so extensively on this subject, I should probably collect these posts into a separate blog that specializes in this subject alone.

Here's where I ask questions about the different style of how gifts are offered, asked around Christmas time: http://is.gd/5JfL6

If someone has difficulty accepting, many times if you can vary the style of how the gift is offered, it will result in making it easier for them to accept. Making light of it's value is sometimes effective, because the best situation between giver and "givee" is when the thing is of great value to the givee and is easy for the giver to offer. But sometimes an action carries much more weight than anything they might say about it. Thus, accepting a gift incites obligation that may be only tacitly guessed.

If you cannot accept a gift, it's fitting to say, "Some mystery part of me is not sure what our (sub)culturally tacit agreement is about giving and recieving - and I'm not sure that talking about it will help me." Some people feel a need to remove themselves from the act, so that the reciever has no idea where the gift came from. It becomes impersonal. Thus we have all of the organizations that specialize in accepting tax charitable gifts and doing the messing actual giving to others.

The proper way to "give back" is not always to do the exact same gesture, because needs are different. The mistake many people make in selecting what to give is they assume their value system of what is valuable is identical to the givee. This is not true. Being able to put oneself in the shoes of the givee is a thoughtful, compassionate act. So this is often a good reason to reject the offer of help - because what is being offered is misplaced and not of value from the point of view of the givee.

In our town, we have a "freebox" where mainly articles of clothing are dropped off to be made available to anyone who wants them. The proper way to give back for the value of what you have gotten from it is to clean and organize the freebox. Many people focus on the stuff itself; they mistake that the proper way to reciprocate is to bring more "stuff." Actually, having a place to bring your stuff to get rid of it is also a significant benefit. So the proper way to reciprocate is more like assuming the role temporarily of a "shop-keeper" to make the good stuff available to those who stop by looking to get something.

The Hawaiian spirit of Aloha is a wonderful template. It observes that you must allow someone to give, even if what is being offered is not of value to the givee. Being able to give is a human right, and by gracefully accepting, you are allowing this pleasure of giving to be exercised.

Generally with people who have trouble accepting being given to, it's important to ask what the accepting of gifts symbolizes. To some people, accepting what is offered is a "one-down" position in a competitive sense.  To others, they are fearful that accepting the gift will make them obligated to play the role eternally.

I've also seen repeatedly a situation that seemed to be a direct result of mistaking the roles and pleasures giving and receiving. The situation was where a partner was forced to accept help because of a temporary injury. Evidently after recovery, the person who had been injured wanted to reject help from their partner to re-establish their independence and self-respect. ANY help was rejected entirely, so often and completely that even the "normal" pleasures of doing things for one's sweetie symbolized infantile dependence to the person who was in the process of recovering. If this was not purposefully addressed, it caused a breakup!
 
Giving and receiving seems to be connected to how respect is shown. In our culture, you must choose between respect and having rapport. Here's a post where I explored it's application in how respect is signified in the context of speaking in a group interaction. http://is.gd/aTqdM  It's curious how listeners are valued socially, (which is a receptive role) when in the situation where the gift is tangible - suddenly the giver becomes the authority.

It's also curious that when someone is in a situation of getting or having gotten a personal benefit, somehow what they offer or recieve is suddenly suspect, because there's now a "invested interest." This is what happens when a person is really passionate about a belief in how something works for them and wants to communicate the benefit of their experience to others - everything they say about what they are passionate about is suddenly considered in that light or frame. They're proselytizers, rather than merely sharing their experience.

Some people take the giver/givee challenge to the point of refusing to establish the bond of a relationship entirely. I talk about that here: http://is.gd/aTspT  There are many rituals of establishing a bond as there are subcultures.

Here's another post where I talk about the anger that results when the givee decides they are "entitled" to what the givers are offering before they're getting it. This talks about greed. http://is.gd/aTtf1

Complimenting is also an interesting way of giving back that some people feel strange about accepting. Of course, it's a benefit to find out that what you do easily is notable for others - because it signifies what could be a valuable talent. Some people automatically reject them out of hand as an expression of the deadly sin of pride or ego. Here's a story about why I believe that complimenting is an important thing to do. In my culture, handing out a compliment implies the person was (like a puppy) explicitly seeking your approval, which may not be true. Rejecting the gift implies that you would prefer to give yourself the approval. There are many other values signified by accepting a compliment that have people have reacted negatively to it. http://is.gd/aTsR9

Anyway - interesting subject. Much exploration to talk about here.