We all keep a wary eye out for “takers.” These are people that supposedly suck the life force out of those with whom they are in relationship with, but rarely give anything of themselves. They are the opposite of the equally supposed “givers.” You know, those relationship martyrs who give, give, give, only to receive little or nothing from their partners.



What ever you do, don’t confuse “givers” and “takers” with the people that are involved in abusive relationships, physical or mental. Abusive relationships have a completely different set of dynamics. They’re about control. Giver/taker relationships are mostly smoke and mirrors rather than smoke and fire.

In the giver/taker relationship, takers are viewed as the bad guys – the people ripping off the poor, innocent givers. The giver gives, yet ends up holding the relational bag, seemingly never getting out of it what they put into it. Is this true or is something amiss in how we view these interactions?

Givers tend to go from person to person, to person. It all starts much the same way. It all ends the same way as well. In the beginning, the person they meet is truly wondrous. They’ve finally stumbled upon the lover of their dreams. Yet in the end, that person becomes someone who doesn’t return their love and affection, and usually leaves them for someone else despite all the giver’s loving attentions.

It’s easy to spot the takers. They’re the soul sucking villains who’ve left those loving givers mired in the throes of yet another broken hearted relationship. The taker moves on to a new lover and lives happily ever after. The giver ends up in still another horrid relationship having her soul sucked out again. Is there no gawd?

Where do we learn to love, to show affection, to give? Loving, like almost everything in life, is something we learn from others. For most of us, we gain our experience of loving from our parents or some other significant person in our family. Unfortunately, those people learned to love from someone in their family as well. And so it continues. It’s why most of us have difficulty showing affection. Our ability to give is bound up by who we see ourselves to be and by the relative position we think we hold in society. Those things are illusions but they greatly affect our capability to share love and affection with another person. If the fear of rejection is a damning force, so is the fear of measuring up to a lover’s expectations. When faced with those fears, most of us back away. And our means of demonstrating our love and affection become seriously hindered.

The problem becomes intensified by the fact that society teaches us to focus more on ourselves than on our mates, friends, or lovers. Our culture encourages us to believe that others have control over how we feel. In other words, if I don’t feel loved, it must be my partner’s fault. It’s her responsibility to bring the feeling of love into my life. Because our focus is on ourselves, we know exactly what we need in order to feel loved and we assume that our partner must know this because we all know what love is, don’t we? Knowing (by our less than accurate experience) what we think we need and what we think love is, we then set about doing two things. First, we show our lovers we love them by expressing it in our own horridly bound up way. On top of that, we lay on them a myriad of conditional expectations (gleaned from our concept of love) in order to feel loved by them.

There are two things wrong with this common approach. The first is, our lover might not recognize our outward expressions as loving. The second is, their outward expressions probably won’t meet the expectations we’ve set. It’s like two televisions positioned screen to screen blaring at each other all day. Neither sees or hears what the other is doing. Let’s take a look at an example.

Now these two women share many common likes and dislikes. They’re both educated, have good jobs, enjoy the same activities, and the same books, TV shows, and movies. They both like animals, taking road trips, the same foods and even decorate and dress comparably. The important thing is, they both love each other immensely. Oh, and the sex is fantastic - best that either of them ever experienced.

Our giver measures love by time. She counts the time her mate makes available to be with her as a measure her mate’s love for her. Given this ideal, she considers every contact by her mate to be an expression of love. This means phone calls, notes, face time, whatever. The more she gets, the more love she feels. And since time is how she sees love, her expression of love towards her mate is measured the same way. She makes sure she phones, leaves little notes, emails, and arranges her schedule so her lover gets the maximum of her free time.

Unfortunately, her mate, our taker, measures love by space. Her idea of showing love is by granting her mate independence to be and do whatever she’d like to on her own. And, of course, she looks to her mate to give her that same freedom in their relationship because that’s love, isn’t it? How long do you think their relationship will last?

You’re right. Forever. Why? Because our giver learned that her mate was showing her love and affection by sharing the same space with her. She learned she didn’t need her to be by her side all the time or to prove her love by sending emails and leaving notes. She came to understand that the trust her mate held for her in her absence was an expression of deep love for her. This reasoning didn’t come right away, but when it did the love she always looked for welled up inside each time she got her mate’s voice mail.

And our taker decided not to feel smothered by her mate’s showering of affection. She learned that the emails, the phone calls, the demands for time were not meant to constrain her, but to enrich her life. She never became very good at this form of communication, but she didn’t have to. Her mate learned to recognize her love for her in the ways she knew how to express it.

Both women came to the realization that they could create their own feelings of being loved by ways other than through their expectations being met. Thus two very different people could feel fulfilled by their relationship.

Don’t allow unfulfilled expectations and the inability to understand love’s countless forms of expression to hinder you from feeling your partner’s love. Look for it in other areas of your relationship. Create it from what she is giving you. It’s there. Believe me. You might just be missing out on the love your life.

Mayhaps there are no takers – only givers in disguise.

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