Eh ... I tend to follow the dictum, "no good deed goes unpunished", at least if you have any expectations whatsoever, even reasonable ones. When you're nice to people who don't think they deserve it, they suspect your motives or try to sabotage the relationship. When you try to save someone, they resent you on some level for infantalizing them. When you're nice to reasonably healthy people they often reciprocate, although unevenly, and there's still the human tendency to take you for granted over the long haul. And then there's the possibility of "growing apart". People change, and understand their commitments very differently, and don't always invest the effort and deference to keep a relationship viable. It takes two to tango, but only one to wreck a marriage.

As for kids ... don't get me started. Parenting is a thankless task with no guarantees. I've seen terrible parents produce wonderful kids and fantastic parents produce demon seed. There are so many variables involved it's absurd -- particularly with divorce in the mix.

I guess my point is that if I think of the altruistic / kind / loving things I've done, it's mostly a source of frustration and disappointment, so it's a place I just don't go to. And not necessarily frustration or disappointment with the people involved, either. It is just the nature of life and living and loving. We're in control of far less than we initially think; the connection between intentions / effort and outcomes is flaky at best, miscommunication is more the rule than the exception, etc.

Far and away the most reliable person I've ever known in terms of taking care of and understanding me, has been me. I can count on me. I mostly "get" me. I wish I had understood this better and had not bought the crapola that society is always selling that there's someone(s) "out there" who are just waiting to meet you and provide some magic fairy dust that will raise you both up and make your life wonderful or at least give you so much pleasure you won't care that it's not wonderful (as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof said of his daughter and son-in-law, "they're so happy they don't know how miserable they are" ).

Life just doesn't work that way, at least not dependably. And it doesn't need to work that way, to be interesting and at least satisfactory. But we waste most of our lives reaching for the stars, only to face-plant in the mud. By the time we figure that out, it's all over but the shouting. That's the great irony of life. Takes a long time to accept it for what it is, and to quit trying to make it into something it's not, to quit trying too hard and caring too much.

Mine is the decision to cause the birth of my children, or maybe there are other things competing.