Is Love/Relationship a transaction?
Posted on February 12, 2021 by Moumita Dhar, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.
Often we find ourselves calculating how much we gave and received in a relationship. The truth is that the transaction exists only in our minds.
Do you remember when you fell in love for the first time? Wasn’t it romantic? Weren’t you just happy without any reason? Weren’t you suddenly loving towards almost everyone and everything around?
If Love was a transaction, your experience would have not been so pleasant. You might tell yourself that you were too young and ignorant and innocent, that you didn’t know about the reality, that you know now the truth. But deep in your heart you still crave for that heavenly feeling. Those memories are still special and beautiful.
Love is not a two-sided thing. It’s an emotion felt by a person. So it is about the person feeling it, not the one for whom the feelings exist. When someone says “I love you“, they are talking about their feeling, NOT about you. If someone loves you and you don’t love that person, you might feel important, but you won’t experience love yourself that way. An emotion that is one-sided clearly can’t be a transaction.
But relationship is definitely two-sided. Yes, it is indeed two-sided. You might think that love is not a transaction, but once you are in a relationship, the transaction begins.
The transaction that exists in a relationship, exists only in our calculative thought process, in our fears, in our selfishness. It’s not the relationship that is a transaction, it’s our perception of the relationship that is a transaction. Once we start calculating in our minds, the love starts to diminish, all that truly stays is the transaction and the calculations.
The best relationship is the one where there is no calculation, where we freely give and receive love, where we don’t have to set boundaries to maintain respect, where we don’t feel like we are investing anything or compromising anything, where we don’t worry about ROI.
Those of you who have ever experienced it knows what I am talking about. If you don’t believe me, look around, observe all the couples you know and think are happy together. If you notice well, you will know what I am saying.
The problem is this amazing state doesn’t last much longer for most people. We start a heavenly relationship and transform it into a miserable one.
– We begin with an abundance of love. We give love and receive love freely.
– Gradually we shift our focus from our partner to our own selves.
– We start noticing how we are giving so much, and how we should get more than what we are getting.
– We start measuring what we are giving against what we are getting.
– Sometimes we compare with other couples, only in the contexts that are convenient to us of course.
– We thus convert our relationship into a transaction and constantly track what we invested and what we gained.
– In the end, we lose most of the love we had initially, we just become two people in a contract.
Once you start looking at your relationship as a give and take transaction, your behavior, thought process, actions, and reactions, everything starts to change accordingly. You form beliefs that drive you to more transactions, not relationships. You don’t even realize how gradually your subconscious wiring changes leading you to a place where you don’t even know anymore that a real free-flowing relationship can exist.
The more you try to transact in your relationship, the more distant you become from your partner. You end up in a relationship of convenience or agreement or compromise. You don’t find Love and happiness that way. You might seem okay to other people, but you know in your heart that this can’t be it, there must be the heavenly amazing loving unconditional love somewhere, there must be the ultimate happiness somewhere, and you long for that experience.
When one partner in a relationship is constantly transacting, the other partner automatically comes down to that level after a while. And when we think that our ROI has been less than we deserve, we end up going further down to a purely selfish level and start focusing only on what we are getting in the relationship. We totally ignore what we are giving to our partner.
What are you doing in your relationship? Do you want to have an amazing free-flowing relationship instead of a transaction? The good news is awareness is the first step. Once you are aware of what you are focusing on in your relationship, you must shift your focus from your needs and from the transactions/calculations to the needs of your partner. It is hard to give something and not try to get something in return. But in a relationship, only when you stop measuring and give freely, you experience the joy of love and you get what you truly want.
In love/relationship, you gain control by giving up control.
– Moumita Dhar
You can’t control your partner. However, thankfully you can take responsibility for your actions at least. You can also take charge of your relationship and make it amazing. Stop all the calculations. Become the very embodiment of love in your relationship. Trust me, that’s the vibe you want your partner to receive from you, that’s the attitude that will enrich your experience of love, relationship and life. Just be patient and consistent, gradually your partner will follow through too.
