I woke up the other day with a hangover.
No, not from alcohol.
From a long night of conversation that slowly drained me.
On the surface, the conversation was warm and friendly. But underneath, the exchange was lopsided. I was listening deeply, holding space, offering presence—and very little was coming back the other way. They were present enough to respond, but not enough to meaningfully engage.
It felt like a slow, subtle soul-leak—like a birthday balloon left deflating on the floor, still intact, but sagging.
The next morning, I felt exhausted. I’d wandered too far out of myself to meet someone who had barely moved an inch toward me.
This was about reciprocity—or more accurately, the lack of it.
Reciprocity isn’t about tracking who did what. It’s not about 50-50 splits or emotional invoices. It’s not “I did this, so now you owe me.”
It’s about balance. Rhythm. Life force flowing in both directions. You know it when you feel it.
And no one teaches reciprocity better than nature.
The tree offers fruit—not for charity, but for continuity. The animal eats, and in doing so, carries the seed elsewhere, helping the tree propagate.
Fungi break down dead matter, turning decay into nutrients that feed the roots of the very plants that once dropped those leaves.
It’s a cycle that feeds what gives and gives what feeds.
To me, this is the pulse of every real human connection. And when that rhythm breaks—when the current stops flowing both ways—my body feels it.
It tells me the truth—not during the interaction, when I’m too busy showing up, but afterward.
Do I feel nourished? Expanded? More alive?
Or do I wake up with that quiet hangover, soul slightly off-center?
The body knows. Before the story, before the logic, before the justification—the body knows.
Once I started to trust my body, I realized I’ve been in too many relationships—personal and professional—that left me with that hangover feeling. Where I showed up fully, only to walk away feeling emptier than when I arrived.
And for years, I rationalized it.
I’d say, “That’s just the way they are.” Or, “They’re fun in small doses.”
But eventually, those excuses started to taste like poison.
If I need to contort myself to stay in a connection, it’s not a connection—it’s a performance. And performances are exhausting.
That doesn’t mean anyone’s at fault. No one needs to be blamed for mismatched rhythms. It’s just two people moving to different tempos.
When that happens, I don’t blame myself anymore. I don’t try to “fix” the imbalance by giving even more. I don’t contort myself trying to make the relationship work for the fantasy of potential.
I’ve let go of relationships that couldn’t meet me in that rhythm—friends, collaborators, clients, even those I once built parts of my life around.
And in doing so, I create space—for alignment, for ease, for relationships that feel like exhale, not effort.
Because the relationships that are meant to last—the ones rooted in that wild, living reciprocity—don’t ask you to disappear.
They bring you home to yourself.
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Bold
