Little is known about how acting on behalf of a task pursuer can affect the task pursuer’s motivation to attempt a task again in the future. In what we find to be a very common type of help, we find that individuals whose close other completes a task on their behalf report greater motivation to avoid the task in the future and greater reliance on others in the face of a similar task in the future. We also demonstrate that reduced self-efficacy mediates this effect. Across a variety of goal domains (e.g., domestic task, work-related task, and online speech task) and types of help-providers (e.g., romantic partner, professional mentor, and task partner), findings from recall experiments (Studies 1a and 1b), vignette experiments (Studies 2a, 2b, and 3), cross-sectional study (Study 4), and real-time interaction laboratory experiments (Studies 5a and 5b) support these hypotheses. These results demonstrate that help can have negative consequences for motivation.