Very interesting thread
Since there are still many unanswered questions in this thread, I’m going to make a few assumptions in this post. First of all, I agree with BSD. It doesn’t matter if he is a professional or just plain handy. What it important is that he has expertise that VV doesn’t and VV has an expertise that he doesn’t. This, of course, is a very common occurrence between friends.
I’m assuming that VV would come to the assistance of a friend if asked to do so in a conventional sence (i.e.: cut his hair; make a casserole if he had guests coming over and needed to feed them; help with decorating ideas for a new apartment; file his income tax return; or change the oil in his car) if she had the knowledge and ability to do so. If this assumption is wrong (and I don’t think it is) then, of course, one would have to conclude that VV has been manipulative and this thread should go no further.
I’m also assuming that VV and this gentleman have a sufficiently close mutual friendship that they can feel comfortable asking each other for casual favours. It’s not uncommon for friends to ask for favours and to reciprocate without feeling taken advantage of. Again, if this assumption is wrong (and again I don’t think it is) then again one would have to conclude that VV has been manipulative.
So the question that begs to be asked is this: Why is VV upset at the suggestion?
There are two possible reasons that come to my mind:
1. She get upset because, although he had responded to her request for help, he did so only with the undisclosed expectation of a specific favour in return and not because he is a true friend who should respond without expectation of any specific favour; or
2. She get upset because of the nature of the specific favour requested in return.
If VV is miffed because she feels that her friend did not help her as a friend but rather in expectation of the requested favour, then I say that’s fair enough. I know I’d be choked if I asked a friend to help me move and he said “sure”, but only if I change the oil in his car. (I would not be choked, on the other hand, if he said sure, and maybe after the move we can change the oil in his car). I’d also be choked if after the move he announced that since he had help me move, I owed him an oil change that must be delivered next Saturday at 10:00 a.m.
But if that’s not the reason, then maybe the nature of the specific favour is the problem. This issue goes right to the very heart of what I’ve been trying to understand about the escort business for a very, very long time. When we visit an escort, the transaction is pretty simple in our mind. We give her money and she gives us sex. We leave feeling that we’ve taken nothing from her but her time. Is that true from her perspective or does she feel that she’s given us more, perhaps much more, than her time? Or maybe it’s because a client must be anonymous for an SP to provide service and a friend can no longer be anonymous in her eyes. Maybe that's the reason VV is disgruntled. I dunno.