ah, thank you for clarifying. that does make me think that we're more on the same page. The most reasonable arrangement is a 50/50 sharing of responsibilities, but as i said before it's always situational. Personally, i'm often willing to put myself out there and make up for the missing effort of the other person, with the assumption that their lack of effort does not reflect a lack of care, it just means that something has come up which demands more of their attention - people go through shit independently of my relationship with them and there's nothing wrong with that. I just hope that they one day return the favor when i go through my own phases. Like you said, it's once it becomes a trend that i scale back to see where the relationship stands. Although, admittedly, this is kind of a counter intuitive strategy, isn't it? It's meant as a means of self defense but man, it was a very sad day for me when i realized all my friends were only my friends because i forced them to be.