RELATIONSHIPS
Three Pillars of Transactional Love Culture
Avoid these at all cost.
Our species is steeped in a Transactional Love Culture. In this reality love has become a commodity to be procured and hoarded. Instead of being the abundant and infinite source that it is, it has become a precious and valued commodity to be doled out to our finite and conditional hearts. It has been tightly interwoven with our sense of self worth, so much so that we abdicate our ability to experience love to only one person that will deliver it to us for eternity, reinforcing our very worthiness (or lack of) in receiving it.
It is no surprise that love has been corrupted this way considering the capitalist conditioning we’ve been subject to, the transactional nature of marriage for millenia, and the merging of emotional fulfillment with the construction of sustainable family units in a culture that has swung toward toxic individualism. This conditioning makes human value (or lack of value) commensurate to the amount of money one has and reduces intimacy and caretaking to a service. And the emotional stakes have never been higher for a world filled with humans that think they have so few wells of love in which to drink from. In this world, it is not a surprise that we see love as a product or prize to be earned, shopped, hoarded and owned.
Pillar One: Earned Love
“You deserve more Kathryn. You deserve to have someone in your life who can give you what you want, someone who is present for you.”
So said my friend JC who was working me through yet another unfortunate occurrence of an emotionally inaccessible man tiptoeing in and out of my life. I seem to have just the right nectar for that particular bee.
As I labored over a sink of dirty dishes I thought to myself, “Well if I’m deserving of more, why don’t I have more?” If the only thing that keeps showing up in my life is inaccessible men, what does that say about what I deserve? And what about all those people who are happily coupled. What did they do to deserve that love that I haven’t done. Or conversely, what about those in unhappy couplings? What did they do to deserve being miserable? What am I missing?
What I was missing was that love has nothing to do with deserving it at all, and that’s why whenever someone tells me that I deserve it, I kind of cringe. I know my friend meant well. He was trying to reinforce in me that it’s okay to have needs in a relationship, and that my human value is undeniable. He wanted to normalize asking for what you want and walking away if you’re not getting that. However, we must be careful to empower people through their own actions (in my case ending something that always left me wanting), not the actions of someone else (how I deserve to be treated by them).
The transactional mindset indicates that love is something to be given (when earned), and taken, as opposed to experienced and received. Love’s highest ideal, and I would say true nature, is antithetical to transactional mindset because it is completely unconditional. As a matter of fact, when it becomes conditional, it ceases to be love. It becomes power or leverage. It becomes a commodity. We need to release ourselves from the notion that we ever have to earn or deserve love. One doesn’t have to do anything to be in line for being treated well, listened to, or held. Love is your birthright. Once you understand this, it’s a lot easier to stop internalizing someone else’s less than loving behavior.
On the other side of the coin, if someone wants you to earn their love or prove yourself worthy of theirs, what they are essentially asking you to do is take on the responsibility of their self worth. They need external validation to love themselves and feel deserving. You will never have enough love to give someone who needs you to prove their self worth. Self worth is an internal proposition and nothing external can change that. So beware of anyone asking you to earn their love, and check yourself if you are asking if you (or they) are deserving of it.
Approach love with the understanding that everyone is inherently deserving, including you. That doesn’t mean that you have to put up with abusive or poor behavior in your relationships, or that you are obligated to love someone just because they love you. It means that you don’t have to be anything other than who you are right now to give and receive love.
Pillar Two: Partner Shopping
‘I look good on paper,’ he said as he looked off dejectedly in the distance.
Of course he was trying to let me know that the reality was much worse. And actually it was, because he was subtly admitting some deep self loathing. But in that moment I realized that instead of offering our authentic selves, most of us are trying to ‘look good on paper.’ We are carrying around a love resume that distills the complex human soul to a list of attributes that one will either want to buy or not.
Partner shopping has reached epicly toxic proportions with the advent of online dating. We optimize our souls so we can be picked off the shelf, and taken home in the time it takes to swipe a screen. We’ve perfected the 15-second elevator pitch and professional grade selfies to attract buyers. If it doesn’t work out, we can always take it back and pick out something else. We are encouraged to make lists of “what we want in a partner,” and classify ourselves in categories for easy shopping. We have perfected ‘the love as a commodity model,’ and with it utterly dehumanized the most complex human experience of a lived life; loving someone.
Love is not a thing, it is an act. Every time we exercise that action energy, we change the course of the relationship we are engaged in. Love is in constant motion, thus transforming everyTHING it touches. In this way love defies the commodity construct and dooms anyone who is trying to make it a thing. If you enter into a love with a transaction mindset you will be disappointed. You will want a refund. You may even go bankrupt.
If you embrace love as renewable energy, as journey, as flow, you will touch its true purpose– to transform. You will experience its true nature–unconditionality.
Pillar Three: Exclusivity Clauses
Possibly the most consequential perversion of love in a transactional culture is the ownership proposition, codified most succinctly in what typically passes as conventional monogamous marriage. Of course the roots of marriage have always been transactional. Up until the modern era, the sole purpose of marriage was to transfer wealth, title and property in society. We literally bought and sold women into marriage to maintain the wealth and status of men. As a culture, we now buy and sell love, support, and emotional security to each other. Although it may seem more romantic, it is actually more insidious in my view.
We literally contract love from another with ownership stipulations and term length. Once one has signed this contract one cannot love anyone else. Those stipulations are enforced to varying degrees. In all cases of conventional contracts this means no sexual expressions of love to another person, meaning the agency over your body has now effectively become someone else’s. We claim this demonstrates love, but it really serves to uphold the other person’s emotional security and self worth. Other times ownership may stipulate forgoing emotional intimacy with someone else (the infamous emotional affair). Here we lose agency over our soul. Even time and effort given to those you already love, like family members, can be called into question. Whatever way it manifests the deal is clear; your body, soul and time are effectively someone else’s, forever, aka “until death do you part.’
Those terms are an anathema to the nature of love because contracts work to solidify something, not give it space. Love is always expanding, changing and creating new space. If those things aren’t happening in a relationship, then love is not present. What is present is ownership and ownership is, no matter how romanticized, not love.
Ownership is the final stage of transactional love culture. If you need a commitment or a contract to love, then you are not acting out of love, you are acting out of fear. Fear of losing that which you have shopped for, deserved and earned. Am I challenging the institution of conventional marriage? Absolutely. There are much better ways to nurture devotion to others.
How to Break Free of Transactional Love
Understand that it is infinite. What do I mean when I say that love is infinite? Practically speaking I am challenging us to continually expand our understanding of love and how it comes into our lives. Love comes in lots of different ways, and we can build relationships without transactional mentality.
Seek out love from multiple sources and multiple contexts, and no I’m not necessarily saying join a swingers club. Notice and acknowledge platonic love in your life and in the lives of those you love. Practice compassion for others that don’t have a direct impact in your life. Give and receive acts of kindness within your close relationships AND larger communities. Stop trying to push love into a tiny little box of singular, romantic connection, and open your mind to the central message of every faith tradition we as humans have created– love is ubiquitous.
Evaluate your expectations. There is a lot of deprogramming to be done if we want to stop commoditizing love. We have been living off of generational romance stories that frame love up as singular, eternal and free of pain and struggle. A good place to start is evaluating your expectations about love like where it will come from, how it will feel, or how long it will be present in your life from any given person.
I often challenge myself here by imagining what my goodbye will be like with a person early on in the relationship. I do this to challenge my expectation of eternality. Does it mean I don’t believe in eternal love? No, I actually do (more on that later), but I also know that the person I said hello to, isn’t going to be the same person I wake up to every morning because humans are in constant change. Visioning out a goodbye helps me to align my expectations and actions with this reality and embrace change, not stagnation.
Some other exercises that have been helpful are writing out a list of how I would like love to positively change me as opposed to what qualities I want in a partner. I also practice gratitude rituals around past pain. The important thing here is to keep challenging your mind so that it can expand around concepts of love.
Disengage with love commodity platforms. Yah, just do it. There is very little that is good about online connecting. The fact that it’s been a back stop to the pandemic doesn’t make it a good idea now. It’s still dehumanizing. It still supports inauthenticity, and a retardation of basic social connection skills. Don’t believe the hype either. There are plenty of ways to meet people offline. My basic rule of thumb here is take that time you’re spending on an app and go volunteer with something that you care about. Immerse yourself offline in clubs and organizations that interest you. Start something that will change your world and invite others to help you. People will show up and you’ll have an opportunity to connect. For those loved ones not in your immediate area, do something revolutionary — write them a letter.
The truth is love defies transactional motives at every turn. Because love changes and transforms environments and people constantly, it shows up in places it “shouldn’t” be. Love unapologetically breaks the terms of the contract. It is available to anyone, at any time. It has no particular market or niche. An ROI doesn’t exist. It’s self replicating with no need for a supply chain. Anyone can make it. It is free and always will be.
© Kathryn Dickel 2021