The Cost of Favour Banking: On Performed Gratitude, Ungratefulness, and the Contracts We Never Signed

Why genuine generosity requires a self-audit, not secret scorekeeping

This week I watched a video on TikTok of a mother-in-law recounting a visit to her daughter-in-law’s house. The daughter-in-law had just given birth and was exhausted, tending to both a newborn and older children. The mother-in-law listed, in detail, all the tasks she had performed that day: laundry, dishes, tidying. She painted herself as a saint in service to a lazy new mother, describing how the daughter-in-law “just sat in her bedroom on her phone.” And then, she dropped the real reason for the story: she felt entitled to different boundaries. Since she had “helped,” she believed she deserved earlier access to the baby and less restriction in the home. Her care was currency, and she expected payment.

This piece is about favour banking. About the unspoken agreements we sign under duress. About the emotional debts we are forced to carry for receiving support we didn’t always ask for in the first place. It’s about the weaponization of care.

In my family, the worst thing you could be called was “ungrateful.” And I was called it often. For not smiling wide enough at holidays. For not using the right tone when saying thank you. For not looking properly thrilled after receiving a gift I didn’t want or need. Gratitude was performative, and if you didn’t put on the show, you were bad.

This idea that I was inherently ungrateful followed me well into adulthood, into my lowest moments. When I was experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity, I would reach out to my mom over Facebook Messenger to ask if she could order me a pizza. The response was not always yes, but it was always layered with shame. Somehow, I was always asking for too much. Somehow, I was never satisfied. The word “ungrateful” echoed in those messages, whether spoken or not. It branded me.

And maybe this is also why it’s so hard for many of us to ask for or accept help. To feel worthy of it.

Because help rarely comes clean.

Because so many of us learned that support arrives dressed in invisible contracts, in subtle power plays, in quiet, festering expectations that we didn’t consent to — but are punished for not fulfilling.

I became someone who would let my problems fester like wounds until they became monstrous. Until they bled into everything. Not because I was proud. Not because I didn’t want support. But because I was terrified of the hidden costs that so often accompany it.

The shame. The performance of gratefulness. The sense that I now owed something I never agreed to. That help would be tallied and brought up later — not out of care, but as leverage.

And so I learned to go it alone. I learned to suffer in silence. I learned to treat independence like a fortress, even when I was crumbling inside of it.

But no one thrives like this.

It’s not sustainable. It’s not healing. It’s just quiet, prolonged survival — performed behind the mask of strength.

Favour banking is the silent economy behind so many of our relationships. You help someone move. You cook a meal. You loan money. And somewhere, deep inside, you file that act into a mental ledger. Maybe you expect thanks. Maybe you expect reciprocity. Maybe you expect your boundaries to matter more, or their resistance to matter less. The point is: you’re no longer giving freely. You’re giving with a receipt.

Here’s the problem. Most people don’t tell you there are strings until you try to tug back. Most people don’t self-audit. They don’t ask: Do I really have the capacity to give this right now? Am I giving from generosity or from a desire to be owed? And when that unspoken contract isn’t fulfilled, the resentment comes rushing in.

But here’s the thing: if you don’t know your capacity, your care becomes a weapon.

We need to learn how to locate ourselves before we try to meet others where they are. That means being honest about what we can offer, and releasing the fantasy that our giving should earn us something in return. Relationships require effort. They inconvenience us. They stretch us. But they are not banks. And care is not a loan.

To truly love people, we have to stop giving with the expectation of emotional profit. We have to stop tallying invisible debts. We have to stop shaming people into gratitude performances just to soothe our egos.

This piece is not just about toxic family dynamics. It’s about the broader culture of performed gratitude and false generosity. It’s about asking what kind of world we want to build, and whether that world has room for care that isn’t transactional.

Because I believe it does. And I believe we can get there.

But only if we stop keeping score.

Because the truth is, real gratitude cannot be coerced. It can only be felt, and given freely.

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