hanging my tomorrows on the bones of yesterday

Okay, so like, I bought you the yarn for the duster as a present for you, but my getting to knit a thing that will be useful and allow my brain to unspool while I’m working on it is a present from me to me. You accepting the physical thing so that I don’t need to worry about it anymore is a gift from you to me.

If I had said to you that you could say thank you but that you were not allowed to do anything nice in return, would you feel weird about that? Why or why not? Does the concept of fairness or feeling controlled enter into it?