Is Love Transactional?

Unconditional love is affection without limitations or love without conditions. How conditional is your love? Can you actually see yourself constantly providing love and affection to someone without getting anything in return?

Growing up, my mind was always conditioned to believe that what you put out in the world will always be returned. If you study hard for a test, you'll pass it. If you smile at someone, they smile back. If you work out every day, you get in shape. Everything positive you give out comes back with positive results. But is that also the case when it comes to love or can it survive one-sided?

If we're being honest with each other, as endearing as the term may sound, 'Unconditional love,' is the most toxic kind of love. It keeps you dry and hungry all the time. Love is very much transitional and is filled with expectations. Expectations that if not met can flush the entire bond as a whole. It is very normal to expect your efforts in loving someone to be reciprocated.

Unconditional love is just as depressing as paying for a car and never getting to drive it. For love to be truly healthy, it must work like a body. Your heart pumps blood into your brain for it to work just as much as your brain reminds your heart to beat. If one fails to do what it needs, the whole body dies.

Providing someone with unconditional love is just bad as unloving yourself. Imagine having a bucket of water and filling up everyone's bucket with love and care and all the support in the world without having anyone fill up yours. You need someone to fill up your bucket of love or else you'll be left parched with loneliness and self-doubt/hatred. As much as you quench someone's needs, that same someone should quench yours before you fall from dehydration.

Love is not a charity case in fact it is exactly like a job, do you really expect yourself to work hard 23 days a month without being compensated for your efforts? I don't think so. There's always going to be a certain threshold to how much you're willing to love someone before you start expecting the receiving end to love you back. It may not always be consistent but it should be visible and parallel to your love language.