Caring – What care means in our relationships
We care for one another in many ways. We ask how someone slept, listen a little longer or make a bed where another person can rest. Some gestures barely register. With others, we want the person receiving them to understand: I was thinking of you when I did this.
Caring is also about what we let others do for us.
Care can be easy to give and harder to receive, especially if we are used to managing on our own and do not want to burden anyone. And sometimes we need to ask ourselves what happens to the care we offer others when we leave ourselves out.
In this text, I explore how we show care in everyday life, why it is not always felt as we intended, what receiving it can mean and how we can allow ourselves to count too.
What does it mean to care about someone?
Caring is both an emotional attitude and something we do. Someone has a place in our thoughts, and how they are matters to us. We pay attention, allow ourselves to be moved and try to respond to what we see. Care can be expressed through presence, words and actions.
We often feel affection for the person we show care towards. They may be someone we appreciate and want to be close to, or someone we feel connected to for various reasons.
But we can also care about someone we do not know. We see that someone is struggling and want to do something to make things easier. Sometimes we feel deeply for the person; sometimes our care is expressed mainly through what we do.
Someone tops up another person’s coffee before being asked. A friend remembers the day someone is due to receive difficult news. Someone changes the sheets and makes a bed for a person on their way home, so they can lie down and sleep. These are simple actions, but they can hold a thought about another person’s life: What would make things a little easier for you right now? What do you need? What do you enjoy?
Unspoken care
Much of the care we give one another happens without words. We orgaze, prepare, wait, accompany someone,ne and take care of things that would otherwise fall to them. Sometimes we barely notice ourselves doing it. The action has become part of how we live together.
The everyday nature of care can also make it difficult to see. Someone coming home to a freshly made bed may lie down without thinking about who made it. The person who did it may not need a thank-you, but may still sometimes want the thought behind the action to be understood. Doing something without mentioning it does not mean it holds no significance for the person who did it.
Recognising what another person needs
Care in a close relationship is often specific. We know something about this particular person: what tends to weigh on them, what they enjoy, when they want company and when they need time alone.
But even when we know someone well, we need to pay attention to how they are right now. Something in their voice, facial expression or manner may make us pause. We can ask and listen, rather than rely on what we think we already know.
Our empathy can help us understand, but our own experience can also take over. What would have helped us may not help the other person. Care takes shape through what we learn about one another, including what matters to each of us.
When care does not reach the other person
It is possible to care deeply about someone and still miss what they need. One person offers practical solutions when the other mainly wants to be heard. Someone takes care of all the practical arrangements but does not notice that the other person wants a conversation. A third repeatedly asks how someone is feeling, without realising that the questions feel overwhelming just then. A fourth assumes the other person wants to be left alone, when the opposite is true.
The person offering care may feel rejected: I was only trying to help. The person receiving it may feel alone: You never asked what I wanted. Both experiences can be true. An action may have grown out of care without being experienced as caring.
Another person’s situation also stirs feelings in us. We may become worried, sad or feel powerless. The wish to find a solution can then become strong, even when no one has asked for one. It can be difficult to stay in a conversation when we do not yet know what would help.
Caring can mean listening and trying to understand what the other person is experiencing, even when it differs from what we would have felt or wanted in a similar situation. Closeness needs to include respect for the other person’s wishes and their freedom to say yes or no.
When it needs to be said
Care can be quiet, but it does not always have to be. Sometimes we want to explain why we did something: I thought you would be tired when you got home. Sometimes we need to ask whether the help was welcome. And sometimes the person longing for care needs to say something about what would feel helpful.
Words can help us understand what happened between us, especially when our intention and the other person’s experience did not match. They can also help us discover that a familiar gesture no longer fits, or that something we barely thought about nevertheless meant a great deal.
Giving and receiving care
For many people, being there for others comes naturally, while letting someone do the same for them feels unfamiliar. We say there is no need, that we can manage on our own, that the other person already has enough to think about. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes the answer comes so quickly that we barely have time to notice whether we might actually have wanted the help.
The wish to manage on our own can be an important part of our lives. It can give us freedom, a sense of agency and security. But it can also make it difficult to be the one who needs something. Being cared for can bring gratitude and relief, but also guilt, discomfort or a sense of losing our independence.
We may want to be close to others while also resisting the dependence that closeness sometimes involves. When someone offers to come with us or take care of a taskwe may not always react to the help itselfto. We may also be reacting to what needing it means for our sense of who we are.
Others long for care but find it difficult to trust when it is offered. Are there expectations attached? Will what we share be received with care? Letting someone into our experience can be a delicate moment. We reveal something they may respond to in ways we cannot entirely foresee. Trust can make it easier to share what we are carrying and let someone be there for us.
Letting someone care
When we decline care, the other person may sometimes experience it as a personal rejection, even though we are trying to protect our own sense of independence. Managing on our own can feel safer than needing someone and becoming vulnerable through that dependence.
We can appreciate someone’s wish to be there for us and still need time to get used to letting them.
Receiving is also something that happens within a relationship. The person offering care has an opportunity to show what we mean to them. We do not have to be helpless to let someone help us, and we can appreciate the thought even when we would prefer a different kind of help.
The capacity to give and the capacity to receive do not always go together. We may be attentive to others’ needs but find it difficult to show our own. We may also readily receive care while less often noticing what the other person needs. How these sides of us find expression can vary between relationships and across different periods of life.
Caring for others and caring for ourselves
Caring for others can give life meaning. We can use our attention and abilities for something that matters to another person. At the same time, care can become so taken for granted that no one sees how much it asks of us, not even the person giving it.
Perhaps we are always the one who remembers, takes the initiative, senses the mood and makes sure there is room for other people’s needs. What was once a freely given, warm gesture may gradually become an expectation.
If saying no or asking someone else to take over feels difficult, tiredness and irritation may begin to exist alongside care.
This does not make the care any less real. We can mean well and still need to notice when something becomes too much. We can enjoy being there for others while also wishing someone would notice how we are doing.
Caring about someone does not mean always being available or taking responsibility for their life. Our own feelings and needs are also part of the relationship. Sometimes we need to decline a task, say that we are tired or let someone else take over. This can make room for care that we have the energy to keep giving and can find joy in ourselves.
What about my own needs?
Caring for ourselves is sometimes described as something we do on our own: we rest, eat or set aside time. These things may be needed. We can also do small things for ourselves with the same thoughtfulness we would show someone else.
But the question is also relational. Is there room for my needs alongside everyone else’s? Can I say that I am tired? Can I want something without first showing that I have earned it?
For someone who often takes responsibility for others, allowing their own needs to matter just as
much can feel unfamiliar. It may then be easier to do something for themselves in private than to let someone else know what they need. Here, too, caring for ourselves meets the possibility of receiving care from others.
Reflection
A freshly made bed may seem like a small thing. But several questions can gather around it. Who was thinking of whom? Who noticed what needed doing? Did the person making the bed get to feel that the gesture mattered? Could the person coming home lie down and accept what had already been done for them?
At first, we may think that care is about who does the most for others.
Looking more closely at our relationships reveals something else: how freely we can move between giving and receiving. A person may be generous and attentive, yet feel uncomfortable as soon as someone wants to help them. Another may long for care but struggle to recognise it when it comes in a different form from the one they imagined.
This says something about how vulnerable we become when we care about one another. We cannot always know whether our care reaches the other person, and we cannot always receive it without something being stirred within us. Yet people continue to do these small things: remember, ask, make a place for someone else to rest.
– Maria Sandgren
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