Abstract
In this essay I probe the hesitation—that considered pause—before requesting help. The social tensions between obligation, perception, and need reveal the complex ways that people interpret and negotiate reciprocity. The unspoken but observed conventions reveal a disjuncture between what people feel they need and what they think they can acceptably ask. Understanding Arlie Hochschild’s concept of “feeling rules” is helpful in understanding the dynamic (1983). She defines feelings rules as those notions that “guide emotion work by establishing the sense of entitlement or obligation that governs emotional exchanges” (1983, 56). Hochschild zeroes in “on the pinch between ‘what