different prices we pay - or WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

so the price of any gift offered to stopdog is control.

Control is not quite the correct term. Obligation or a combination of obligation and control. I wish I had a better vocabulary for it. And not every one is that, but every exchange or encounter does have a cost or exchange.

yabbut when the other person KNOWS you, like T knows me, their gifts, their contact don't HURT me or feel like an obligation. unlike FOO. there can be an almost free give and take.

Whether you know the cost or not...there is always the obligation. I hate obligation. That is why I refuse almost all that is offered to me. Birthdays and holidays are a fricken nightmare. But those are concrete things....The price if it is paid in hurt or blood is just as bad.

well this is what I wonder. would WE be this way in a r/s? are r/s doomed to be so obligatory? I tried to have looser more open r/s, but it turned out we just didn't care that much about each other, or someone feels neglected. can't you l0ve someone and not have a strangle hold on them?

It is possible to have a more even exchange in some circumstances. I only get involved as lovers with people with whom it feels like an equal exchange or that we each know what we are bargaining for, what the other one has to give, and accept that it is enough for us and them.

Therapists are wily and one never knows what is going on with them.

Lately (and YES I am bitter) r/s are nothing more than a set up for pain.