The Question Underneath #3: “Why is it so hard to receive?”
How Neglect Wires Us for Over-giving
Welcome to The Question Underneath — with Care, my advice column where I sit with your questions about love, conflict, heartbreak, grief, and the strange, holy difficulty of being in a human body.
This isn’t a column about answers. It’s about slowing down long enough to hear what a question is really asking.
In this column I respond to one reader—not to tell you what to do, but to help return agency where it belongs. You can write to me with whatever you’re circling: a conflict you can’t resolve (internal or external), a regret that won’t loosen its grip, a pattern you’re tired of repeating.
Today I’m answering R., who asked:
I recently read your last post about over-giving. I felt called out! In a good way. You mentioned overgiving is a control issue, could you expand? I can feel it in my body being close to something true, but I can’t quite pinpoint it. Why is it so hard for me to receive?
As always, I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments!!!
Dear R.,
In a piece called Overgiving and the grief of lost genuineness in an avoidant world, I’ve spoken about being an overgiver. And like I wrote earlier, I genuinely love to give.
But I’ve also had to come to terms with something far less flattering: my love of giving is tightly entangled with my fear of receiving.
Recently, I was talking to this beautiful, brilliant woman. Somewhere between curiosity and full-blown gay panic, I managed to stay present enough to actually listen. She asked me about my love life (!) and I told her that at some point, I really believed I could approach romantic love the same way I built my business: with strategy, intention, a clear plan. But slowly, I had to admit that… this shit ain’t working.
She looked at me and said, very simply: “Business requires strategy. Love requires
