17/10/2025
When Love Becomes a Transaction
The danger of only feeling worthy when we’re useful to someone.
Some of us were raised to earn love — not receive it.
We learned that being helpful, giving, fixing, or sacrificing made us valuable. So we kept doing it, believing that the more we gave, the more we’d be loved.
But love that depends on what you do instead of who you are isn’t love — it’s a transaction.
You offer your time, energy, and care, and in return, you hope for affection, attention, or approval. It feels like connection, but it’s really an exchange — one that slowly empties you.
You start measuring your worth in usefulness.
You overextend yourself just to keep your place in someone’s life. You shrink your needs so you don’t seem like a burden. You mistake being needed for being loved.
True love doesn’t keep score.
It doesn’t require you to earn rest, affection, or belonging. It wants you present, not perfect.
When love becomes a transaction, you stop existing as a person and start functioning as a service.
But real love — the kind that nourishes — asks for you, not your usefulness.
The question is:
If you stopped giving, fixing, or proving… would they still stay?