I totally agree, Jacqui. It is an awful feeling when you realize that someone has been with you (whether for a night, weeks, months, years) not for YOU, but for something they could get from you. This could be sex, status, any number of things. And the 'being with you' need not have been a relationship, it could be a friendship, a business partnership.

I'm not so sure it is such a straight division in attitude between men and women, though. There are some wonderfully giving men, and some horribly grasping women about, and vice versa. Rather than make a division between male and female attitudes, here, I wonder if it is more that some people (male and female) are more overridingly "givers" and some people are more overridingly "takers" in this life. This can be a generally inherent characteristic, or learned (and unlearned) by experience, and it 'colours' a person. I also think that each of us, every second of every day in all its minor occurrences, make choices between being a Giver or a Taker, moment by moment by moment. I find it quite a sobering exercise to look at events, at the end of a day, and see what choices I made in it between giving and taking.