Reciprocity is not just a way of dealing with boy scouts and obnoxious salespeople; it’s for friends and lovers, too. Relationships are exquisitely sensitive to balance in their early stages, and a great way to ruin things is either to give too much (you seem perhaps a bit desperate) or too little (you seem cold and rejecting). Rather, relationships grow best by balanced give and take, especially of gifts, favors, attention, and self-disclosure.
