Make Reciprocity the New Entry Fee

There’s a point in your healing where you stop asking, Why don’t they choose me? and start asking, Why am I offering depth to someone who hasn’t shown capacity?

That’s where reciprocity becomes the new entry fee. The non-negotiable.

Chemistry can feel real even when it isn’t. Potential is just the story you tell yourself when reality feels disappointing. And emotional dumping dressed up as vulnerability is still access, not connection.

I learned that slowly and painfully. Most of us do.

There was a time when someone confiding in me felt like proof that I mattered. I thought being the person they turned to meant I was special. It took a lot of honesty to see the truth. They weren’t choosing me. They were choosing the comfort I provided. The steadiness. The space I made for their feelings. The emotional labor I gave without ever asking for anything in return.

That wasn’t intimacy. It was convenience.

Real intimacy moves differently. It looks like consistency instead of begging to belong. It sounds like someone who follows through, not someone who apologizes for dropping the ball every time. It feels like reciprocity, not you carrying the depth while they coast on the ease of your presence.

Access is easy. Anyone can text you at midnight. Anyone can unload their feelings. Anyone can reach out when they’re lonely or bored.

But meeting you is different. Very few people have the emotional growth, depth, maturity, or capacity to come toward you with the same intentionality you bring toward them.

So when you start healing, the first thing that shifts is your awareness…

• You see things you used to overlook. 

• You feel the heaviness in places you once pushed through. 

• You notice the imbalance you used to normalize.

Old patterns start to feel uncomfortable. The reflex to overgive doesn’t feel as automatic. Your body pulls back from dynamics you once tolerated without question.

Space opens up for honesty. Not the pretty kind. The kind that shows you who drains you, who meets you, and who never really did.

Little by little, connection stops being something you perform for. It becomes something that either aligns with your capacity or falls away on its own.

What reciprocity actually looks like

Reciprocity is simple: Do their actions meet you where you stand?

• Do they follow through?

• Do they initiate as often as you do? 

• Do they match your emotional presence?

• Do they make space for you the way you make space for them?

• Is there mutual support, love and care?

Your energy is expensive. So treat it that way. Stop just giving it away the second someone ‘needs’ you because you’ve made it easy to pour into their cup without much effort. 

In other words, you’ve gotta stop letting people build campfires with your glow when they showed up without any wood.  

Let people earn layers of you

This part is especially hard for those of us who grew up overgiving and earning our place in every room. When care was conditional, we learned to hand out emotional access like an apology. We revealed ourselves hoping someone would finally meet us. We offered intimacy long before anyone had shown they could hold it.

It took me a long time to understand that my layers are not something people get to unwrap just because they want to feel something. Letting people in is an act of self-respect, not self-sacrifice. 

Access should cost effort, presence, intention, and consistency.

Your heart isn’t a public space. It’s a place someone has to arrive at with care.

And here’s the part that stings. You're not entitled to someone’s presence, and they’re not entitled to your overgiving. The only thing you’re responsible for is what you choose to allow. What you choose to ignore. What you choose to call “connection” even when it’s draining you.

You also don’t break the pattern by becoming smaller or more convenient. You break it by believing the way you love deserves to be met, not managed. You stop settling for people who only rise to the level of your availability instead of meeting you at the level of your depth.

Your standard was never the problem. Your capacity was never the issue. The tenderness you bring into relationships was never too much.

You were simply offering parts of yourself to people who were never meant to hold them. Not because you were unworthy, but because they didn’t have the reciprocity, the emotional maturity, or the willingness to match what you so naturally give.

When the wrong hands try to hold a generous heart, it always feels like you’re the problem.

You never were.

🎙️ New Episode: The Kind of Accountability That Actually Heals You

This episode gets into the kind of accountability that actually heals you. The kind that asks you to meet the younger version of you still running the show when life gets hard.

I talk about how motherhood became a mirror, how marriage exposed the age of my wounds, and how taking real responsibility shifts your nervous system out of autopilot.

Listen here 🎧

A gentle reminder for where you are right now

If something in this hits a nerve, it’s because a part of you already knows you’ve been settling for emotional crumbs and convincing yourself it was compatibility. 

You’re allowed to want reciprocity instead of effort imbalance, clarity instead of guesswork, and connection that fills you rather than drains you. 

This can be the moment you stop auditioning for closeness and choose presence over potential. It can be the season you protect the glow you carry instead of handing it to anyone who arrives empty-handed. 

You’re not powerless here. You get to decide who has access to you, and you get to choose who’s invited to sit at your fire.

See you next Saturday ❤️

Suttida

P.S. I’ve now sold over 100 copies of the 4-week deep dive workbook. If prioritizing your healing and growth is sitting at the front of your mind, especially with the new year around the corner, this is one of the best places to begin. Get your own copy.