The Ben Franklin Effect

Najwa was joking with me yesterday, at her house, about what made Gino break up our marriage, and it clued me in to something. "I guess it was terrible for him," she said, "I guess having a wife who cooks all the time and always wants to have sex is super hard."
I laughed along with her, but it made me think. I was always trying to make Gino happy, and not only doing the majority of the household tasks but bringing home the bulk of our income, and all it got me, in the end, was a lot of exhaustion. He thanked me, I guess, every now and then, but, as he told me recently, he never got why I was always working my ass off to make him feel special. I did so much, for so little need, because that was what I thought I was supposed to do. I never figured out that doing nice things for someone is not how you get them to like you. People tend to forget the favors you do for them, but not the favors they do for other people.
There is something called the Ben Franklin effect, a small phenomenon that occurs when someone asks another person to do a favor for them. It is called the Ben Franklin effect because Ben Franklin once made a remark about what happens between a favorer and a favoree, that convincing someone who doesn't think much of you to help you can make them suddenly think that they value you more highly as a person. The effect can actually cause the person doing the favor to believe that they really, really like the person they are doing the favor for. It's a remarkable bit of brain trickery, and, I believe, one of the reasons why I might never be happy and will get my heart broken over and over. I don't even mean just by men. I will get my heart broken by nearly everyone I meet because I will never learn.
I am always the favorer, that much is obvious from my history. I use favors and compliments and being nice and surprising everyone with a bunch of bullshit they don't need as my in, my way of showing them that I have value, that I am worth spending time with. It's pathetic and unnecessary and no one cares. I did it with Gino throughout our entire relationship, layering a thick coat of flattery on him whenever I could and spending far too much time worrying about how to make him happy. His assessment of this behaviour in me, when he told me that he could never figure out why I bothered, why I was always trying so hard, is something that still hurts. I do it for my friends, as well, and they usually appreciate it, but probably wonder the same thing, wonder why I am so fucking eager all the time. I did the same thing with Mike, and wondered the entire time why my constant efforts had no effect on him. I couldn't keep him interested because I was always too available, and too nice to him.
This will always be my biggest problem. I am too available. I always say yes, and I will show up to anything that I am invited to, and that is why no one cares if I am there or not. I wondered aloud once why it was that when I showed up to anything, everyone always asked me when my friend Tony was going to get there. I was a little resentful of it, after a while, because I wanted to ask why it wasn't enough that I was there. After enough times, I finally got it. No one cared if I was at their party or their gallery show or their birthday dinner, because I would always show up. They wanted Tony there because he was never there, and if he showed up, he showed up two hours late and ducked out before they could get bored with him. I did the opposite, showing up early and staying until nearly everyone else had left and telling too many stories and exhausting everyone. It's the fundamental difference between us- I am always available, and Tony is never available. Even though he was my best friend, I never stopped being jealous of the fact that he had this effect on people and they loved him for it. Me, they could take or leave.
Keeping a man interested for longer than a few years seems to be difficult for me. I make the guys I have been involved with think that I am a lot tougher and less prone to get attached than I really am. I break their balls a few times, and they must think that I will be like that all the time, that I will be bossy and hard-to-land. When it turns out that I just want to make them happy, that nothing will please me more than to cook them lasagna with six different cheeses and watch The Big Lebowski and then leave them the fuck alone until they want to have sex, they must just get bored. I keep circling around what my big problem is, but I don't think it's me. I think I just choose the wrong dudes, because how could any normal person get bored with that? Gino would not have gotten bored if I had brought home a different girl every night to blow him while he played Star Trek online, but that is the only way, I think, that I could have stepped up my game. I have no idea what could have kept Mike from getting bored with me, but I don't really know him all that well. I do know that showing up with homemade pie the week after he told me he couldn't make out with me anymore was just another example of me trying way too hard, and that I could have saved myself some embarrassment by not doing that. It would have been less embarrassing to show up with pie all over my face after eating the entire thing myself.
I can't help the fact that I am a giver, that I get more fulfillment out of making someone else happy and occasionally being thanked for it. It makes me love the person more, to the point where, apparently, I gross them out. Gino was, without even realizing it, working the Ben Franklin effect long con on me. The years of doing so much for him made me believe that I was constantly trying because I loved him so, so much. I did love him, that will never be called into question, but the fact that he never did favors for me as readily says something. The only time, really, that he had to do anything for me was when I had a broken leg, just last winter, and he had to do everything for me because I couldn't do anything, including drive. In six years, I had never asked him to go to the store for anything for me, but then the time came that I had to send him out for tampons. He whined, and told me he had just gotten home and wanted to sit down, but I told him that there were no two ways about it. "My period stops for no man," I said, "Please go get them?"
He went, of course, and came back with a box of some kind of ultra-slim, ultra-light flow tampons that were of no use to me, so I had to ask him to please go back and get different ones. I wasn't the nicest I have ever been about it, but I had my period, and a broken leg on top of that, and I was just annoyed with him. He bitched, but he went, and came back with a box of normal ones, and I made a point to thank him multiple times until I was out of the cast and could take care of myself again. I felt so guilty for the fact that I needed him to do anything for me that I knew I would never ask him for a favor again. Turns out, that was actually true.