There is a kind of loneliness that doesn’t come from being alone. It arrives when the telephone rings all day, your diary is full of other people’s needs and everyone agrees that they don’t know what they would do without you.
You are the dependable one. You remember birthdays, solve emergencies, take the late call, make the difficult arrangements. People speak warmly of you. They are grateful. And yet a peculiar question can begin to form: if I stopped being helpful for a while, who would still want to sit with me?
Being useful can feel wonderful. There is real satisfaction in making another person’s day easier, especially when you care about them. But usefulness is a role, and roles have a habit of expanding until they swallow the person performing them. Eventually even affection can become organised around what you provide.
This is difficult to notice because nobody has necessarily behaved badly. A family may genuinely depend on you. Colleagues may be overwhelmed themselves. Friends who always seek your advice might believe they are showing trust. You may even have encouraged the arrangement because competence is easier to display than uncertainty.
The arrangement changes, if it changes at all, through small and slightly awkward moments. You admit you can’t help on Friday. You say you’re tired before asking how somebody else is. You invite a friend out without offering to fix anything. You allow a problem to remain with the person whose problem it is. Some people will adapt happily. A few may be cross. Their disappointment does not settle the question of what you owe them.
We talk about boundaries as though they were lines painted on a floor. In reality they are conversations, and some conversations are untidy. There may be responsibilities you cannot put down. A parent caring for a disabled child, for example, cannot solve exhaustion by announcing a new personal policy. Practical support matters far more than fashionable advice.
Still, it is worth noticing whether your relationships contain any place where you are permitted to be ordinary, unhelpful, confused or simply in need of company. Everyone deserves that sort of room.
I would rather be loved for my company than praised endlessly for my capacity to rescue a situation. Ideally there would be some of both. The second should never be the admission price for the first.