When Love Learns Reciprocity

Some lessons in life hurt more than others. Sometimes the pain comes from another person, and sometimes it comes from what we discover when we are willing to look honestly at ourselves.

When you love someone, even if they do not reciprocate that love in the way you hoped, there is usually something to learn. Sometimes the lesson comes immediately. Sometimes it takes years before your awareness is ready to see it clearly. And sometimes we repeat the same lesson because we have not yet understood what it is trying to show us.

I had a pattern I was completely unaware of until love showed up, showed me what I was missing and shined a glaring floodlight on it.

Love has a way of illuminating what has been sitting in the dark. At first, it can feel incredible, all the light, connection, attraction, fun, hope and possibility. Then the unhealed, unaware, fearful, avoided and denied parts of us start coming to the surface too.

A lot of our behavior is automatic. It is like locking your car, walking twenty steps away and suddenly wondering, Did I lock it? You probably did. You have simply repeated the action so many times that your conscious mind barely registered it.

Emotional patterns can work the same way.

Many of them begin when we are young and trying to figure out how to belong, how to be accepted and how to receive and get love. We adapt. We adjust. We hide parts of ourselves. We have excitement and think it is fear. We discover what seems to keep us safe, and eventually those behaviors become part of our internal operating system.

The way I learned to receive and get love became connected to performance, being good, being smart, accomplishing things, being useful and giving.

Somewhere inside me was the belief that if I could be good enough, capable enough, helpful enough and loving enough, maybe I could earn love, get it, keep it and belong.

So I became very good at doing.

I worked hard. I accomplished a lot. I learned a lot. I helped people. I gave to people because I wanted them to know they mattered to me. All of this was not bad, but I gave what I had wanted so badly myself: emotional, mental and physical safety, connection, love, belonging and care. This was what I was missing in childhood. It was very painful to my heart. I spent so much of my life adapting and surviving to not receiving enough love that I became totally spectacular at functioning without it.

What I did not understand as a child was that none of those things were actually required for me to be loved, and should have not been, so I just kept doing more to try to fill the hole of no love, or the way I needed it to be shown to me.

It was not until I finally deeply loved someone and they mattered so much that I finally saw the pattern and another part of it. The pattern that was on auto pilot.

Sometimes I was giving so much that I was not leaving enough room for another person to stand beside me.

That was painful to see because my intention was showing and giving love.

I thought I was helping to support. I thought I was showing someone they mattered. I thought being capable, generous, understanding and available was what love looked like, but intention and impact are not always the same.

My competence could sometimes look like superiority. My helping could remove another person’s opportunity to help. My independence could appear that I don’t want or need anyone. My constant problem-solving could leave very little room for someone else to solve something in their own way. My giving can make people feel like they can never measure up. This can make people feel flooded, inadequate, not wanted and overwhelmed.

It was never my intent. I genuinely thought I was trying to be the best person I could be.

But love needs balance and it needs reciprocity.

Just because I have a tank full of love does not mean I need to flood another person with it, and just because I can carry the backpack does not mean I am supposed to carry 100 percent of it.

That is not my job. My job is to keep being me, but with better balance. It is not my job for you to deal with what those situations brought up inside of you to deal with or look at, it is yours.

I naturally want to ease suffering in people or things I care about. If someone is struggling, I want to help. I may give a gift during a stressful time, offer grace when life is difficult or step in when I see someone overwhelmed. I may randomly say words to support but I am learning we may need to ask and listen to people and sometimes not just do.

There is nothing wrong with all those traits, but there is a line between helping and carrying, compassion and excusing, understanding and ignoring your own needs, giving grace and allowing another person to avoid responsibility.

When I continually step in, the other person may no longer need to step forward on their own, and that is where reciprocity disappears.

Being given or shown love by someone is a gift. Love may be freely offered, but its value is immeasurable. It is not something that money can buy.

When we overgive, overlove or overshare, though, we can unintentionally remove the space another person needs to become vulnerable themselves. They need room to choose, work on themselves, contribute, initiate, repair, help, speak, show up and show us how they love. They may think you don’t need them because you are so efficient yourself. This is not what I wanted, ever. I want love in my life and I need it. I want to know what lights you up, what you desire, want and need. That helps me to love you better and if you will share, I will do everything in my power to make that happen for you. For you to be happy, have fun, have joy and be excited about life makes me happy and fulfilled also.

I already know how I show love, but I am still learning how others need to receive love, how they experience love themselves, how they give it and how I can support that.

I know how I give, anticipate, help, understand, forgive, explain, carry, stay, nurture, show up and fight dragons beside you.

My lesson is not how to show love more.

It is how to let love become mutual, to build something where we can fight dragons together, carry the backpack together, show up when life gets hard, laugh at each other’s quirkiness, and still find ways to make ordinary life wildly fun, magical, and exciting.

Reciprocity is not keeping score. It is not, I did three things for you, so now you owe me three.

It is simply:

• I bring myself.

• You bring yourself.

• We both contribute to what exists between us.

It means I do not pour so much into a relationship that the other person’s participation becomes optional.

It means I do not confuse being needed with being loved.

It means I do not allow another person to let me do everything because they think I do not need help simply because I have not asked or we both have not communicated needs or because a comment was once made to me, “What, you can’t do it yourself?” That did not help the overgiving, oversharing, overloving pattern, and that person did not want to change any of their behavior to make it equal. They wanted to be superior, have control and not change anything within themselves. At that time because I had an inner wound there I did not see, or the narcissistic traits in them, I kept letting that person mentally, physically and emotionally manipulate, and control me. Now, I am stronger and althou I may be able to do alot myself, I want people who want to share, give, laugh, love and participate in life with me.

It means I leave enough space for someone to show me who they are and what they are willing to bring. This way neither of us disappear.

Sometimes that space reveals something difficult. Maybe the other person does not want the same kind of relationship I want. Maybe they are not willing or able to meet me in the same place.

That does not mean I am unlovable, and it does not necessarily mean they are incapable of love.

It may simply mean the way I love, give, what I want and need and the relationship they are able to build, want, need and give do not fit together.

That truth can hurt, but it is still better than trying to create the entire relationship by myself. This applies to all types of relationships. Family, friends and romantic.

I think this is the part I had forgotten:

I matter too.

I am allowed to have needs and want support without someone making fun of that.

I am allowed to want someone to initiate, reach for me, be vulnerable, love me, support me when I need it, care about me and carry part of the backpack if applicable, those are basic human needs.

I do not have to become indispensable in order to belong.

Someone can love me simply because I am me, not just because of what I do, what I give, how I look, what I achieve or how useful I can make myself. All those things can make up who I am but I am still lovable without all of that.

I can still be ambitious. I can still accomplish things. I can still be Wonder Woman. I can still be generous and love fiercely.

But those things can become expressions of who I am instead of proof that I deserve love.

Now I can show up differently because I see the pattern that was running.

I can help without rescuing.

I can give without flooding.

I can offer grace without taking responsibility for another person’s choices.

I can share without revealing everything before trust has had time to grow.

I can remain capable without assuming every problem belongs to me.

I can be independent while also wanting and needing support.

I can have space and freedom for myself and give space and freedom to others.

I can honor another’s needs as I honor what I need for myself.

I can be loved just by being me.

I can love just because I want to.

I can care about Me, care about You, and care about the Us.

That is where love becomes conscious.

Not when one person gives and does everything, but when two people bring themselves fully human, flaws and all, and allow love and vulnerability to move in both directions.

I carry mine and work on it.

You carry yours and work on it.

And when one of us gets tired, we help support each other without permanently taking ownership of the other’s load.

I already knew how I showed love.

Now I am learning how to let myself receive, be loved, have belonging, be given too and be nourished, which is the very thing I have wanted my entire life but was pushing away without even realizing it.