Culture Cue: Reciprocity In Relationships

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about reciprocity in relationships - how it feels when it’s present and how it feels when it’s not. And how to honor the need for reciprocity without the weight of entitlement and expectation. 

Can you think of a time when you were in a relationship that felt one-sided, like the give and the take wasn’t balanced? Can you think of a time when it was balanced? The difference is the ingredient of reciprocity.

Reciprocity provides momentum and sustainability in relationships because it creates a loop of feedback for the people involved. It’s a way to communicate care and respect, two important foundations in a healthy relationship. Without reciprocity, the feedback loop stagnates and resentment often builds. 

Reciprocity doesn’t mean I have to do the same exact thing for you as you did for me. Rather, true reciprocity is a dynamic process in which the people involved can intuit or ask what the other party needs or wants, and then provide it in a mutually beneficial way. It requires listening and taking the time to pay attention to our relationships. 

In a similar way, reciprocity can be an important value in culture. When reciprocity is valued by a culture, it’s more likely to be practiced within relationships because it’s an ideal already established by the group. It also may mean that the culture can have reciprocal relationships with other cultures and/or with the earth and environment. Reciprocity touches all of our relationships, whether they’re human centered or not.

 

Additional Perspectives on Reciprocity

“Abundance is a dance with reciprocity - what we can give, what we can share, and what we receive in the process.”

-Terry Tempest Williams

“It was through her actions of reciprocity, the give and take with the land, that the original immigrant became indigenous. For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.” 

-Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass

A Prompt For You

Think of a time when you felt true reciprocity - what were the ingredients that made it possible in that relationship?

Inspiration

An interesting example of reciprocity is the mentor / mentee relationship. Formal mentorship and apprenticeship have become rare in the modern world (at least in the U.S.). But these two episodes on The Michelle Obama Podcast provide an interesting and insightful look into the joys and benefits of mentorship.