Energy vampire

A friend calls, and an hour later you have heard every detail of their week. You have not said a word about yours. Nobody asked, and you did not offer.

The crisis changes, but the shape does not. One person brings the problem and the other brings the listening. One person calls late, and the other picks up.

Afterward you are flat. Not angry, just used up. The evening you had planned is gone, and you cannot quite say where it went.

You see the name on the screen, and you are already tired.

The exhaustion is real. Nobody reaches for a word like this unless the tiredness has gone on a long time and has a shape.

It is right about the flow, too. The traffic runs one way. Something is being taken: time, evenings, attention you did not have spare. None of that is in dispute here.

At the other person. The word describes them, and a description of them leaves you only three moves: leave, avoid, or brace. Most people have tried all three and still answered the next call.

That is the clue. If the drain lived only in the other person, distance would fix it. The same tiredness often shows up with a sibling, a coworker, a partner, a different friend. A word for one person cannot explain a thing that follows you across five. A sequence can.

The word is not a diagnosis or a type of person, either. It is a feeling, turned into a name for someone else.

A request begins. Before it has finished, you have said yes, or settled in for the next hour. The reasons come after: they need me, it would be unkind not to. They sound sensible every time.

Just before the yes, your body moves. A drop in the stomach, a heavy chest, a tight jaw. That is the body signal, the feeling that tells you the pattern is starting.

In this archive the pattern is The Draining Bond. It is the pattern where you keep giving to a bond that keeps taking, and you cannot step back even when you want to.

Pick the next call or message from the person who drains you most.

Before you answer, feel the body signal: the drop, the heavy chest, the tight jaw. Name what is starting: this is the yes that leaves before they ask.

Say one short sentence out loud. I have twenty minutes tonight. Or: I can't talk now, I will call tomorrow.

Then take the different action instead of the usual response. End the call when you said you would. Mention one thing about your own week. Let a late message wait until morning.

Count it as one rep, one repetition of the new action. It counts if it felt awkward. It counts if you stayed on longer than you meant to. You are not trying to change them. You are taking back a few seconds before your yes.