I am loath to ask for repayment; I feel it is incumbent upon them to begin paying us back without our asking for it. While I am willing to consider the first money a gift (although I’d rather not), I clearly noted that the other money should be paid back to us. As my husband and I are nearing retirement, that money would be useful for our retirement account. Do we ask for repayment, or do we consider this a lesson learned the hard way? Name Withheld
The moral matter is straightforward: They’re spending money on things that aren’t among life’s necessities, and you indicated that the money — or at least some of it — was a loan. On their part, I agree, the decent thing would have been to assume that all the money was a loan and not leave it to you to collect on it. There are reasons that recipients of generosity can respond poorly to it; they can feel humiliated, and therefore resentful. But nothing like this, it seems, has tinctured their relationship with you — in your book, they’re still wonderful people.
In our interpersonal dealings, emotional generosity often requires that we disguise financial generosity.
Seneca, the first-century Stoic, wrote that givers, ideally, should forget that they have given (it was obnoxious, he warned, to keep telling people what you did for them), while receivers should never forget having received. In fact, he thought that forgetting a benefit made you “the worst and most ungrateful” of beneficiaries. Had your friends mentally filed away your largess as a gift? In certain respects, it was one: The money was what financial professionals might call a “gift loan” — the sort of loan meant for tiding over friends in distress.
And you were doing so with some sensitivity. When you said, “Pay us back when you can,” you may have been looking after your welfare, but you were also affirming that yours was a relationship of equality and that you didn’t see yourself as a patron. (Among Romans of Seneca’s day, a central social relationship was a hierarchical one between the patronus and his cliens, the benefactor and his beneficiaries.) In our interpersonal dealings, emotional generosity often requires that we disguise financial generosity. Even if a rich friend doesn’t care whether you pay back the money she gave you, she might salve your ego by assuring you that it’s just a loan. But the system works best if one really does make the effort to repay the debt. In this case, the money you provided was plainly significant to you. These good friends of yours are, in at least this respect, bad friends.
So try to think of a tactful and affectionate way of asking them about repayment. Doing so carries a risk: It could embarrass them and take a toll on a relationship you value. But a friendship involves the good will of two parties, and this unpaid debt is preying on your mind. Your refraining from mentioning it, I fear, could also cause your friendship to suffer. Possibly it already has?
Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. His books include “Cosmopolitanism,” “The Honor Code” and “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.” To submit a query: Send an email to ethicists@nytimes.com; or send mail to The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018. (Include a daytime phone number.)
