What Do We Owe Each Other?

My client spent two hours setting up for her birthday party. She’d sent e-vites three weeks in advance. She assembled a drink station with everyone’s favorites and made a playlist. Twenty people had said they’d come. Instead, four showed up, and three of them left early.

She sat on her couch at 9 p.m., surrounded by unopened bags of chips and melting ice, thinking, “What did I do wrong?”

As a therapist, I spend my days trying to get people connected to community. Connection is the foundation of everything we do in therapy. Study after study shows that social connection is one of the strongest predictors of well-being, longevity, and resilience. When someone is depressed, anxious, or struggling, one of the first things I assess is: Do they have a support system? Are they connected? Can they reach out?

And now I’m watching an entire generation use therapy language — the language meant to help them set healthy boundaries — to justify complete isolation. Scroll through social media and you will see these phrases everywhere. “You don’t owe anyone an explanation.” “Protect your peace.” “Choose yourself.” “If it doesn’t serve you, let it go.”

Many of these statements aren’t even wrong. They started as legitimate advice written for people in harmful situations like abusive relationships, unhealthy family dynamics, or draining one-sided friendships. Many were written for women who’d spent their lives putting everyone else first and needed permission to say no. These concepts, when used appropriately, are truly helpful.

But somewhere along the way, the nuance got stripped out. This is what the internet does — it takes sound advice and plays telephone with it until the message is twisted and unrecognizable. There’s a viral post that captures this perfectly: “Uh-oh, the worst person you know just learned therapy words.”

Clinical concepts are being used as weapons instead of tools for growth. “Gaslighting” means disagreement. “Boundaries” means never having to be inconvenienced. “Toxic” means anyone who annoys you.

My client asked me later: “Should I have expected them to come? Did they owe me that?”

I thought about the philosopher T. M. Scanlon and his book What We Owe to Each Other — the one from The Good Place, if you watched the show. Scanlon argues that much of morality comes down to treating people in ways you could justify to them. We have obligations of honesty, respect, and consideration because those are the things we all need to live together.

But according to the internet, Scanlon got it wrong. According to the comment sections, you don’t owe anyone anything.

So what do we owe each other?

You don’t owe abusive people anything. You also don’t owe your energy to genuinely one-sided friendships — the ones where you’ve tried and nothing changes. But most relationships are just imperfect, which is not the same as toxic.

In most cases, we owe each other basic consideration. An explanation when you cancel plans. The effort to show up even imperfectly. A text back. And, yes, going to a birthday party you said you’d attend. This isn’t about martyrdom, it’s about reciprocity. The problem is, once reciprocity fails, the failure becomes contagious.

My client’s birthday party shifted something in her. The next time someone invited her somewhere, she didn’t go. She’d learned her lesson. I watched her become exactly like the 20 people who didn’t show up for her. It becomes a vicious cycle: everyone waits for someone else to go first and then nobody comes at all.

Being there for others doesn’t deplete you, it fills you up. When you help someone, your brain releases dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. Studies show that helping others reduces stress, anxiety, and depression. It lowers blood pressure and boosts your immune system.

But there’s a catch: the effects are short-lived. Connection requires showing up again and again, to invest in your community. It’s like going to the gym — you can’t go just once and expect to feel the benefits forever. You have to keep doing it.

And when you’re isolated, showing up feels harder. The less you do it, the more difficult it becomes. You become more anxious and the very thing you’ve been avoiding — the discomfort of actual human connection — is exactly what you need. But by that point you’ve dug yourself quite a hole. Now you need the energy not just to maintain relationships but to build new ones from scratch.

You can’t just subtract people from your life and expect to feel better. You also have to add people and keep them. And all relationships take work. They require effort, inconvenience, and showing up even when you don’t feel like it.

We don’t owe each other perfection or endless availability. But we do owe each other the willingness to be there, to be inconvenienced, to choose connection over comfort.

If we want the world to change, it starts with how we treat the people right in front of us. Text your friend back. Have the awkward conversation. Attend the birthday party. Someone has to go first. It might as well be you.