A clear agreement can turn an exhausting obligation into a contribution you can choose honestly.

Open-ended duties are heavier than defined ones, even when the actual work is identical. Helping out indefinitely, with no stated scope or end, means every request feels like a test of loyalty and every refusal like a failure of it. Once the terms are named, one evening a week, these months, this much, the same task becomes something you agreed to rather than something happening to you. Consent needs edges to exist.

Take the vaguest commitment you carry and put a shape around it in writing. Say what you will do, for how long, and what falls outside it.