Giving and receiving is the transfer of ownership from one person to another with agreement by both parties. Theft is the transfer of ownership without agreement when ownership becomes in dispute.
Sharing has no ownership. Therefore we cannot share anything to which we have an attachment of ownership. Ownership means it’s my own. Sharing means it’s not my own.
What we own belongs to us by virtue of our attachment to it. When we become attached to something that we do not own, we are driven to acquire it and make it our own. This requires someone to give it to us and receive something in return, unless we steal it, which is theft.
This transfer of ownership is an act of giving that has a conditional act of receiving attached to it. What is given and received may be material, emotional or intellectual and every act of giving has a conditional act of receiving attached to it, otherwise it is sharing.
Sharing is often mistaken as giving half of what we have to someone else but there is always a condition attached to this giving, which is usually that the recipient gives half of what they have to us.
What we see as fairly sharing everything we have is called give and take, but is still the act of giving and receiving. Dividing belongings equally or giving and receiving to each other in equal amounts creates the agreement of joint ownership and co-dependency.
When we own belongings together, we become jointly attached and dependent on everything that we jointly own. Whatever our partner has as their own, we will seek to acquire so that equality or equal ownership is restored.
In a co-dependent relationship, couples are jointly attached to everything until they fall out and fight over the ownership of everything they owned together. This is called divorce.
Shared ownership is an oxymoron because true sharing has no ownership and no attachment. When we share our lives with another, we renounce all attachment and ownership materially, emotionally and mentally in the acceptance that everything is ours.
The giving and receiving of joint ownership is about ‘you’ and ‘me’, together in the separateness of co-dependency.
Sharing is about ‘us’, in the sensitive detachment of separate togetherness in an inter-developmental partnership.