Be Ruthless About Reciprocity

For years, I chased connection the way I used to chase running PRs - the same obsessive energy, willingness to ignore every signal my body was giving me, and the belief that if I just pushed harder, the finish line would finally stop moving.

The version of me back then thought love was earned through effort. Give more, do more, sacrifice more, and eventually the person across from you will meet you there.

All the effort I'd been proud of was actually a coping mechanism for a wound I'd been carrying since childhood. My inner child believed my seat at the table had to be constantly earned, and I'd built my entire adult life around proving I deserved to stay. What I called generosity was really fear wearing a nicer outfit.

Somewhere along the way, you were taught that the right relationships are worth working for, and that's true. But the thing is that working for a relationship and working alone on a relationship are two entirely different experiences.

When someone's presence in your life keeps you guessing, that guessing isn't a mystery for you to solve. It's the answer sitting in front of you. People who want to be in your life make that clear through the way they behave. Follow-through, initiation, consistency, effort that doesn't require a special occasion to appear. Confusion is what shows up when their behavior isn't matching the story you keep telling yourself about who they are.

Every time you feel unsure where you stand, your instinct is to work harder to figure it out. You send another text, plan another dinner, offer another olive branch, and interpret their delayed response as anything other than what it is. What you're actually doing is manufacturing evidence for a case that never should have needed defending in the first place.

🎙️Be So Ruthless About Reciprocity That Confusion Becomes Your Cue to Exit

This week on the podcast, I get into what it means to stop chasing connection and start letting people show you exactly where you stand. I talk about why depletion started feeling more comfortable than receiving, how to spot the difference between working on a relationship and working alone in one, and what it takes to finally trust the answer confusion has been trying to give you.

Give it a listen 🎧

What Reciprocity Actually Means

Reciprocity isn't about keeping score or evenly giving and taking. It's about whether the connection feels mutual in your body. Are both people are steering, repairing, and investing?

When that mutual effort is missing, you already have the information you've been asking the universe for. Your job stops being to solve why the person isn't showing up and starts being to accept that they aren't. Their reasons might be valid and they may have their own wounds to work through; however, none of that changes what's happening in the space between you.

And here’s the question worth asking yourself: is their current relational capacity the ceiling you want to live under for the rest of your life? Because when you're in the cycle of hoping and excusing and waiting, the ceiling starts to feel like the room. You forget there are relationships out there where the sky is the limit and yours doesn't have to press against a wall someone else built and refuses to expand.

The energy you've been pouring into figuring out where you stand with someone should get rerouted back to you by YOU.

Your worth was never supposed to be measured by how much of yourself you'd sacrifice to keep someone close.

And the people who are meant for your life will not require you to audition for the role of being in it. They'll show you clearly, over and over, that you belong there.

You've been the one who deserved that consistency the whole time. Start being the person who gives it to yourself first.

See you next Saturday ❤️

Suttida

P.S. When you're ready to do this work, my 4-week digital workbook will walk you through it. Grab your copy here