When you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him. ― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
When all is said and done, I think people largely have good intentions. I think people prefer to have win-win situations for the most part. But I do not think that some people are equipped to meet their needs in ways that benefit everyone involved.
Nowhere is this more insidious than when one uses love and affection to get love and affection. What exactly does this look like? I’ll give you some examples with things that happened in the past week.
A relative asks you to accompany them somewhere, but you say no. Because they aren’t getting what they want, they begin arguing about your resistance to their request until it gets to a fever pitch and they leave in a huff. They then return with some stuff you like.
It is certainly possible that in giving you some things that you like that this is their way of apologizing. Even if that were true, this isn’t an apology. This is an attempt to get them back on your good side. This isn’t expressing remorse. This is not acknowledging that they refused to acknowledge your no.
Also, this just papers over the cracks because this same incident will happen again because there is no accountability.
Here’s another example: you’re attracted to someone but they don’t feel the same. They’ve told you this more than once. But it seems as if you won’t take their no for an answer.
You’ve watched this rom-com plot lots of times. All you have to do is be callous (if they’re a heterosexual girl), be saccharine (if they’re a heterosexual guy) or look at what they lack and be that for them. That way they get accustomed to you and can’t live without you.
You love them so much that you will give them whatever affection they appear to enjoy in order to get love and affection from them.
Yet another example is when you barely have a relationship with someone. But as soon as they see that you have something that they want, they turn on the charm. They have not gotten the chance to know you, they haven’t thought about what you want and they haven’t even considered that incompatibility may be an issue.
They view relationships in very simple terms: you have something that I want and I want you to give it to me. If you didn’t have it, I wouldn’t have even spoken to you. And if you don’t give it, I will pester you (with love!) until you do.
I’ll give one last example. This is from my childhood. There was a point in time where I felt sufficiently connected to my parents. I was securely attached for sure. But then I wasn’t. It seemed as if the difficulties of life were eating away at my parents (although I didn’t know this at the time) and I felt the sting of that. I wasn’t as loved as I used to be.
Feeling that void, I then began to ingratiate myself to them. I became sweeter, friendlier, more inquisitive and I guess more annoying because it definitely didn’t work. Then when my sister was born I hoped to regain the connection and secure attachment there. It was a failure of epic proportions.
I resented them for years because I did so much to try to make things right. What I hadn’t considered was the fact that I was the one that wasn’t being loving.
Yes, my parents changed and my sister was a brat to me. But love is about accepting the other person as they are. I failed to do that.
Don’t get me wrong. I was a child, after all. I didn’t know anything and was simply trying to get the love I was accustomed to. But this tendency followed me into adolescence and adulthood. Although I had no real success with it, it was the one strategy I had.
Acceptance of what the relationship was and who the other person was had never crossed my mind. I just thought, “Maybe if I show love to people, they’ll show it back.”
Fortunately, there have been times where I had genuine interest in people and couldn’t help but express it. Fortunately, people felt the same towards me. Those relationships blossomed into something fantastic. Virtually all those relationships are still intact.
Everything else, not so much. Most are gone and some are on life support because there are times of genuine care but also times of trying to buy love with love.
This strategy often fails because people can smell the fakeness. They know a con when they see one. But this strategy often works because people are unconsciously being fake to one another.
If you give love and affection in order to receive love and affection from someone who is guilty of doing the same, neither party will be able to sense it. Then eventually, they will both see that the other person’s words and actions don’t line up. As a result, the love goes offline when they don’t get what they want (or they got what they want and don’t need anything else right now) or when someone else can give them what they want with less problems.
You really do get what you give. If you aren’t putting out true acceptance, you won’t get it in return. And that’s not to say that you’ll agree with everything that someone else says or does, but you can at least endorse their liberty to do what they think is right without you withdrawing from their life.
It may be true that your intentions were to give love but you just weren’t aware of the self-centeredness of what you were doing. I’ve been guilty of it so I totally get it. If you’re also guilty of this, now that you know better, do better the next time.
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I’ve written about how important it is to give love if you want love in return. It’s a shame I wasn’t clear about this in the past, but let me state it now. Do not give love and affection as a currency to exchange for love and affection.
I mean, do it if you want. It’s your life and your relationship. But if you want something sincere, you must be sincere yourself. Otherwise, you will never be able to detect insincerity in others.
The desire to be loved is especially urgent for those of us who felt insecurely attached when we were young. We want psychological homeostasis as soon as possible. But faking it until we make it, whether consciously or unconsciously, isn’t love.
And if you aren’t being loving, if you aren’t accepting the other person as they are, you are causing someone else to experience the same pain you are feeling in yourself.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Wright Brand Bacon on Unsplash