Why do I hate owing people?
A friend helps you move. Within a week you've bought them dinner or offered to help with something of theirs. Until it's paid back, something itches. It looks like good manners. It might be something else.
The maxim
François de La Rochefoucauld, a French moralist of the seventeenth century, spent his life writing down the motives people hide. One of them:
"Too great a hurry to discharge of an obligation is a kind of ingratitude."
— François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims, maxim 226, translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell
He chose the word "ingratitude" on purpose.
Paying to get out
In maxim 438 he describes a kind of gratitude that settles the debt and then puts the giver in yours. Once the account is closed, you owe nothing, and nobody has a hold on you.
So the discomfort may have less to do with the favor than with the bond it creates. Someone gave without being asked, and for a while you're tied to them. Paying back fast cuts the tie.
Needing to hear that you're loved is a different pull. It has its own page.
What the maxim leaves
La Rochefoucauld names the motive and stops there. He says nothing about how to accept a gift. One question is left: what part of me can't stand being given something?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.