What Happens to a Relationship When the Other Person Can No Longer Give What They Once Gave?

What Happens to a Relationship When the Other Person Can No Longer Give What They Once Gave?

There are moments when a person discovers what was truly holding a relationship together. As long as the friend was funny, successful, and full of energy, the phone never stopped ringing. When that friend went through a difficult period and became less pleasant and less available, the circle grew smaller. As long as Father was the man who arranged everything, gave advice, helped financially, and hosted the family, everyone knew how to come to him. When he grew old and began to need others, something in the relationships changed. We know the same phenomenon in the workplace: a person is highly valued while productivity is high, and the moment performance declines, that person may feel that personal worth declined with it. Do we know how to love a person during a period when that person is no longer useful to us in the way they once were?

On Sukkot we take four species, and one of them seems almost hopeless in the competition for attention. The etrog is beautiful and impressive, the lulav has presence, the myrtle gives fragrance, while the willow is remarkably plain. The sages say in the Midrash: “Willows of the brook, these correspond to Israel who possess neither Torah nor good deeds” (Vayikra Rabbah 30:12). In the same Midrash, the etrog represents those who possess both Torah and good deeds, the lulav those who possess Torah but not good deeds, and the myrtle those who possess good deeds but not Torah. The obvious question then arises: if the willow brings, in the language of the parable, neither taste nor fragrance, why is it included in the bundle at all?

The Midrash does not answer by removing the willow. It says exactly the opposite: “The Holy One, blessed be He, said: Let them all be bound together in one bundle, and these will atone for those” (Vayikra Rabbah 30:12). Notice the depth of the statement. The Holy One, blessed be He, does not say that the willow must first become an etrog and only then may it join. It enters the bundle as it is now. Not because Torah and good deeds do not matter, but because belonging to the people of Israel is not a prize awarded only after someone has demonstrated sufficient output.

This is a very difficult idea to live by because much of our world is built in the opposite way. At work we measure productivity, and rightly so. In business we examine results, and rightly so. When a person hires a professional, there is a legitimate expectation of receiving a service. There are relationships in which exchange and usefulness are legitimate parts of the structure. The problem begins when we carry the same accounting into places where a human being ought to be worth more than what that person is currently able to produce.

The Torah presents a sharp example of this in the commandment to honor parents. “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12) is not a commandment contingent on how useful one's parents can currently be to their child. The Gemara tells how far Dama ben Netina went in honoring his father, even at the cost of a major financial loss (Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 31a). Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, Maimonides, rules that even if a father's or mother's mental state becomes severely impaired, the child must make every effort to conduct himself toward them according to their condition as far as possible (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Rebels 6:10). Precisely when a parent is no longer the same strong and providing person as before, the commandment does not disappear.

The Torah broadens this perspective to old age itself: “You shall rise before the aged and honor the face of the elderly” (Leviticus 19:32). In a world that grants great status to speed, innovation, and productivity, a person may feel that as strength declines, importance declines as well. The Torah performs the opposite movement. It commands the young and strong person to rise. The young body stands before the body that has already weakened. Human value is not determined only by the question of who is presently capable of doing more.

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi teaches in Pirkei Avot: “Do not look at the vessel, but at what is inside it” (Pirkei Avot 4:20). In its original context, the Mishnah discusses Torah study and the age of Torah scholars, so it should not be turned into an unlimited slogan. Yet it reminds us of an important principle: the visible exterior does not always tell us what is inside a person. Someone going through a weak period may look as though there is “nothing to give,” while inside there is a world of memory, experience, sensitivity, and relationship that cannot be captured in a performance table.

Social psychology distinguishes between two kinds of relationships. Margaret Clark and Judson Mills studied the difference between exchange relationships and communal relationships. In exchange relationships, we monitor balance to a substantial degree: I gave to you, and therefore there is an expectation of reciprocity. In communal and close relationships, by contrast, a person responds to the other's needs without keeping an exact account at every moment of what has been received in return. This does not mean that a healthy relationship can remain one-sided without limit. It means that not every act of giving is measured immediately against repayment.

The difference becomes visible precisely when the balance of strength changes. Two friends may help one another for years in almost equal measure. Then one becomes ill, enters a crisis, or loses a job, and for a long period has no ability to give back. Now the nature of their relationship is revealed. If the entire relationship was a sophisticated exchange transaction, the imbalance will quickly become unbearable. If the relationship also contains an element of covenant, the other person can say: now it is my turn to carry more.

Ruth says to Naomi: “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back from following you, for wherever you go, I will go... where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried” (Ruth 1:16-17). What makes these words so powerful? Naomi herself says that she has almost nothing to offer. She returns to Bethlehem and says: “I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty” (Ruth 1:21). Ruth remains precisely when, from a utilitarian perspective, the arrangement looks poor. This is loyalty that does not first ask what I will receive from the person if I stay beside them.

This happens within families in more subtle ways as well. A successful child brings a great deal of satisfaction, so it is easy to speak about that child. A child struggling academically, socially, or with expectations can quickly begin to feel that the relationship has changed. Not necessarily because the parents love the child less, but because their disappointment seeps into the tone, the look, and the comparisons. The child begins to learn a dangerous message: when I succeed, it is more pleasant to be with me.

The same can happen in marriage. A spouse who for years was active, initiating, and carried a large part of the household goes through a difficult period. Suddenly the other spouse is required to give more and receive less. Of course, this is no justification for neglect, harm, or exploitation. But there are periods in life when marriage is not divided fifty-fifty. Sometimes it is seventy-thirty, and sometimes for a period it is ninety-ten. The question is whether we know how to distinguish between a person who does not want to give and a person who, at the moment, simply cannot give as before.

The sages also formulated this responsibility in a brief phrase: “All Israel are guarantors for one another” (Babylonian Talmud, Shevuot 39a). Mutual responsibility means that we are not a collection of independent units, each remaining in the system only while the calculation is personally advantageous. Sometimes one person carries more because another cannot. On another day, the roles may reverse.

Here the willow becomes a mirror. It is easy to hold an etrog and admire it. It is much harder to hold beside us a person who is currently in a “willow” period: there is no new achievement to report, no energy to be interesting, and perhaps that person needs us more than they are able to give us. Precisely there we are tested on whether the relationship is built on the value of the person or mainly on the value that person provides to us.

We can take a simple test from this into the festival: who in my life has become less “useful” and therefore, without my intending it, less present? Perhaps an elderly parent who tells the same stories again. Perhaps a friend going through a heavy period whose conversations are no longer light. Perhaps a child who is not currently providing the satisfaction we hoped to receive. Perhaps a veteran employee who is no longer the fastest, but carries experience and loyalty that do not fit easily into performance metrics.

The four species do not say that all human beings are identical. On the contrary, the Midrash emphasizes their differences. Yet after describing those differences, it does not place the willow aside. It remains in the hand. Perhaps because there are periods when each of us is an etrog, and there are periods when we have little taste or fragrance to offer the world.

The great question is not only who will remain with us at our peak. The question is who will continue to hold us within the bundle on the day when we have nothing impressive to display. And perhaps the harder question is whether we know how to be that person for someone else.