Business or Relations?

Most people confuse emotional relationships with professional relationships and as a result contribute to the agony of all those involved. You only give what you want to get back works only in business. 

If there is a person who does you favors only expecting similar favors back from you, better keep the relationship with that person strictly formal - irrespective of the person being a blood-relative to you or not.

There ought to be a certain code of conduct for every human life lived. And every such code must be governed by a certain set of moral values and principles. These rules are formulated by the kind of upbringing and the education you are made to receive (academic) and the education you choose to receive (literary and multimedia). This Code largely dictates what you perceive of your fellow human beings and hence what your fellow human beings perceive of you.

So, if you are expected by people around you to impress them by behaving like they want you to, you need to realize that their behavior too is governed by expectations - their own expectations of you and others' expectations of them. This is not a healthy barter system in case of emotional relations because such relations are above these lowly parameters. They are dictated not by expectations but by comprehension - a mutual comprehension of thoughts shared and not shared, of deeds done and not done, of words meant and not meant.

My experience of relationships so far has largely been restricted with only one very strong emotional bond with a family person who was not chosen by me. The rest of the relations that give me strength in life are all chosen by myself. In fact, the relations in which people not chosen by myself expect me to think of them the same way as they do of me have only caused me lot of trouble and mental pain. This might be why am not really very inclined towards the family system although I respect it and plan to inculcate it in my offspring.