It has never kept a deal

Before you agree to anything, look hard at who is asking. This is not a new counterparty. It has brought you the same offer for years with the same closing line attached: just this once, and then we are done. So pull the record. Not the feelings, the record. How many times did the once actually turn out to be once? Not how many times you meant it. How many times it delivered. You already know the number and it is not a large one.

Which means what is on the table is not really an offer. It is a loan request, and you are being asked to lend again to a borrower who has defaulted on every previous loan. Any bank on earth declines that in half a second and thinks nothing of it afterward. You would decline it on behalf of a friend who kept getting treated this way. The only reason it still gets a hearing is that this borrower lives in your head and knows which evening to ask on.

Worth getting straight, because it changes what your no actually is. You are not being harsh with yourself and you are not gritting your teeth through anything. You are declining a bad credit risk, which is one of the calmest decisions a person ever makes. There is no cruelty in it and no drama. You do not owe another chance to something that has never once paid you back, and refusing to fund it again is not deprivation. It is ordinary housekeeping.

So answer it like a clerk rather than a philosopher. The record does not support this. Then close the file and put your hands on something else for ten minutes. Ask God to keep your memory honest tonight, because the whole business depends on you forgetting what happened the last time you said yes. You have kept more promises this month than it has kept in all the years you have known it. Lend accordingly.